Former Ballarat resident Luke Dow is at the forefront of cancer research in New York, running his own lab at Weill Cornell Medical College

While it's not exactly where Dr Dow saw himself ending up while sitting in science class at Mount Clear Secondary College, his scientific journey has taken him through the University of Melbourne, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and several prestigious research laboratories in the United States.

For the past eight years, Dr Dow has run his own cancer laboratory at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York and last month welcomed Australian Consul General in New York Nick Greiner, a former NSW premier and federal Liberal Party president, on a tour through his lab.

Dr Dow and his 11 staff, including one other Australian scientist, are back at full capacity after having had to dramatically scale-back work during the terrifying waves of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York.

"We are working on trying to understand how genetic mutations contribute to the initial growth of cancers and which ones are important for cancer to keep growing, with the idea if we understand what cancer needs to survive we will be better equipped to build more effective drugs to treat it," he said.

The lab works mostly on colorectal and pancreatic cancer, and increasingly lung cancer.

"These are the three biggest killers in the western world at least," Dr Dow said. "Lung cancer is definitely the worst and colon cancer is second, while pancreatic cancer is third but trending toward second. One of the reasons it's becoming higher on the list is that we are detecting colon cancer early, and when you catch it in the early stages it can be surgically resected, but pancreatic cancer is another story and it's a real challenge."

In the lab they analyse clinical samples of cancers from patients for different mutations, different behaviours, resistance to drugs and attempt to find the reasons these occur.

"We need to get ahead of the clinical experience and figure out ahead of time, when new drugs come through research or on to market, how we can predict resistance or avoid it in the lab before it reaches a patient so we know what to do if the problem arises."

The goal of the research is more targeted treatment for different types or mutations of the same cancer - so one group of patients with a similar cancer type mutation gets a particular drug instead of all colon cancer patients with that type. "We can narrow it down to the patients who will respond most effectively," he said.

Like most of New York, the Dow Lab at Weill Cornell closed during lockdowns, with the lab's animal colonies having to be reduced 90 per cent, which took almost 12 months to rebuild once work was able to resume.

Dr Dow was actually in Ballarat visiting family and friends in March 2020 as COVID-19 began to sweep New York, and snuck back in just before lockdown hit the city that never sleeps and the world began to understand the impact of the virus.

"The first three months where we started hard lockdown were difficult ... but Australians experienced that for much longer," he said. "It was scary because we didn't know exactly what was happening."

Many physician colleagues were called up for service as New York COVID cases soared, some labs shifted their research focus to COVID, and other colleagues volunteered to work in testing centres because they had the molecular biology required for tests ... "but at the same time we didn't have tests available to do".

Living on Roosevelt Island in the middle of New York's East River, Dr Dow said it was a surreal experience looking back on to a quiet New York with no cars on the road. "New York doesn't sleep, there's cars and noise constantly so it was a strange feeling," he said.

"Then at 7 o'clock, when shifts changed, people were banging pots outside their apartment windows to thank health care workers and we could hear that."

Mr Greiner's visit to the Dow Lab at Weill Cornell last month came after Mr Greiner also set out to get back to full capacity after the pandemic.

"Mr Greiner has been in his position for about two years, mostly during pandemic time, so he's making effort to contact and connect with Australians working in New York in different sectors. I follow the Consul General on Facebook and he posted a picture from Cornell Tech saying if you are an Australian working at Cornell Tech to reach out ... so while I'm not at Cornell Tech I got in touch saying I have the lab and I have a post doc in the lab who is Australian and if he was running any life science events in the city to let us know because we would like to connect with other Australians who work here.

"He said he would like to come visit and see what the lab does ... and he did."

Dr Dow said there were a few other Australians working in science and medicine in New York, but not a lot.

"One of the things that is, or was, encouraged if you are in science in Australia is once you have your PhD to go overseas and get experience somewhere else in the hope you then come back to Australia with that experience," he said.

"There are a surprising number of Australians (in New York) but in science we don't come across a lot of Australians, though I do think we punch above our weight scientifically."

After going through school at Mount Clear Primary and the-then Mount Clear Secondary College, Dr Dow was one of the few students from his year level to head to Melbourne for university - studying the new biomedical science degree at University of Melbourne.

"Up until that you did biology through science, or medicine, but this course was specifically designed to train people to do biomedical research," he said.

During the three-year course he travelled back to Ballarat most weekends to play tennis and see family, then completed his honours and PhD at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre where he met fellow Mount Clear College alumni Associate Professor Misty Jenkins who now runs a laboratory at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute investigating immune responses to cancer, particularly brain cancer.

After his PhD, which looked at cancer genetics and how cells migrate and move, he interviewed for positions in the US and Europe and chose a lab on Long Island in New York that was at the forefront of understanding cancer genetics using mouse models.

That institute, which was formerly run by James Watson who was one of the discoverers of the structure of DNA, was also headed by an Australian director Bruce Stillman and Dr Dow took over the position from another Australian scientist.

That lab later moved in to New York City to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre and when Dr Dow was then looking for his next position in 2014 his current job at Weill Cornell, across the street from Sloan Kettering, was advertised and he has been there since.

Although his job is research and management based, as a lead investigator and lab head it's also about securing funding for the research to continue.

"You get the job based on your research and idea and what they think will do well given the resources and money, and you apply for other money through grant agencies," Dr Dow said.

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"Their hope is that because you have performed well up to that point, that you will continue to do well which will lead to new discoveries and lead to clinical trials through the hospital system you are part of. Hospitals can be leading centres in bringing in new treatments."

In the US, researchers apply for NIH grants, similar to the National Health and Medical Research Council grant system in Australia, but the US version funds research for longer periods and provides more funding.

Philanthropy also plays a much bigger role in medical research funding in the US.

"In the US, particularly on the east coast and New York, there's more family wealth and people want to donate to science so part of the funding is by incredibly generous philanthropists which allows researchers to do more work," Dr Dow said.

"There's definitely more old money, more generational wealth, particularly on the east coast and upper east side New York but there's also people who can just get very, very wealthy here. The top 0.1 per cent of the US are obscenely wealthy and that's great, it's how we build the culture, but the culture within that is many want to give back and for many of them that's through medical research - they have either dealt with an illness directly themselves, or a family member has dealt with a medical problem and they want to see research done ... and we benefit from that."

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