ProfessorJohn Simes

At the NHMRC CTC, Professor Simes co-leads a team of researchers that have collaborated on over 100 multicentre clinical trials with 70,000 participants, resulting in major advances in health care. He has played key roles in: (a) the LIPID trial demonstrating survival benefits with pravastatin in 9,014 patients with CHD, which changed national and international guidelines; (b) the FIELD trial demonstrating fenofibrate-associated reductions in microvascular complications in 9,795 patients with diabetes; (c) multiple clinical trials in breast, gastro-intestinal, genitourinary and other cancers that assessed chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgery and novel targeted therapies and have influenced current practice and ongoing research; (d) studies evaluating optimal use of treatments in neonatal medicine including the BOOST-2 trial; and (e) the demonstration that aspirin is effective and cost-saving in preventing recurrent venous thrombo-embolic disease.

He has been a joint coordinator of the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists Collaboration, which conducts periodic meta-analyses to address key uncertainties about the effects of lowering cholesterol. He is Chair of the INSPIRE (International Trials of Aspirin to Prevent Recurrent Venous Thrombo-embolism) Steering Committee. As Group Coordinator of the Australasian Gastro-Intestinal Trials Group, he is overseeing several GI trials including two large trials on gastro-oesophageal cancer (INTEGRATE and TOPGEAR), and as well as a study of laparoscopic vs open surgical resection for primary rectal cancer (AlaCaRT).