Sarah Hayes's Biography

Sarah Hayes, Research Fellow, University of Sydney

Dr Hayes has had over 7 years of experience in area of cancer proteomics, with her PhD undertaken at the Australian Proteomics Analysis Facility at Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia) in the area of colorectal cancer research. Dr Hayes' doctoral research involved the identification and verification of putative plasma protein biomarkers predictive of colorectal cancer patient response to 5-fluorouracil-based chemotherapy using advanced mass spectrometry instrumentation.

Dr Hayes is a specialist in targeted mass spectrometry (known as Selected Reaction Monitoring Mass Spectrometry or SRM-MS), as well as in other techniques used in cancer proteomics. During her PhD, Dr Hayes authored 3 first-author original research papers, as well as a review article. In addition, she has presented at several national and international conferences including the 2010 American Society of Mass Spectrometry, from which she received a competitively awarded travel grant to attend their annual meeting. She was also selected as one of only 4 students to present her work orally at the annual Australian Proteomics Society Conference in 2012, the largest proteomics meeting in Australia.

Now at the Kolling Institute of Medical Research (Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney, Australia), Dr Hayes has been awarded a Cancer Institute NSW Early Career Fellowship to continue her work using cutting-edge mass spectrometry methods to rapidly screen plasma from non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients to identify non-invasive diagnostic, predictive and prognostic biomarkers of this disease. This work will greatly contribute to the growing field of research into the personalisation of treatment to individuals, as well as our understanding of the effect of molecular pathogenesis on treatment efficacy.