World-renowned pathologist and researcher, Professor Anthony Gill AM, was recently honoured with the top prize at the NSW Premier's Awards for Oustanding Cancer Research.

Anthony, a senior staff specialist in anatomical pathology at Royal North Shore Hospital and a Professor of Surgical Pathology at The University of Sydney, was named Outstanding Cancer Researcher of the Year.

While he was happy to be recognised, he emphasised the collaborative nature of his achievements.

“We have a group of between five and 10 dedicated scientists and pathologists, and we all work together on a lot of these research projects in collaboration with many other doctors and scientists in the hospital,” he said.

“It’s an approach that hasn’t changed for 150 years — it’s still taking a very thin section of a tumour, treating it in the lab, and then looking at it under the microscope.”

Anthony has worked at RNSH since 1997 and was recognised for his track record on a range of projects.

In 2010, he founded the Cancer Diagnosis and Pathology group, which focuses on cancer diagnosis and subclassifying them based on tissue biopsies. “It’s nice to get some recognition for the group in this field,” he said.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) recognised Anthony for his pivotal role in describing a new class of cancers known as ‘succinate dehydrogenase (SDH) deficient’ mutations.

His team has also worked on big-scale research projects, including the Australian Pancreatic Genome Initiative.

For the past six years, the busy pathologist has also been involved with standardising the criteria for different cancers with the WHO.