Associate Professor Alexander van Akkooi was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA. He has both American and Dutch nationalities. He strives to deliver state of the art, top-class care and is recognized as a world-leading expert surgical oncologista doctor who specialises in diagnosisng and treating cancer with surgery in the treatment of melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers.
He studied medicine at the Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, where he gained his MD title in 2008. During his surgical specialty training (2009-2014), he was awarded his PhD cum laude in 2011 on the thesis: “Sentinel Nodethe first lymph node(s) to which cancer cells are most likely to spread from a primary/original tumour Tumor Load Assessment in Melanomaa type of cancer that develops from melanocytes, which are the cells that produce pigment generally in the skin (but can develop in other areas of the body): Dilemmas and Clinical Management”.
He has served on multiple international committees, such as ASCO and ESMO. Prof. Dr. van Akkooi published over 225 peer reviewed papers (H index 42) in some high impact journals (i.e. New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Lancet Oncol, Cell, Nature Med) and has presented at numerous (international) meetings. He joined the Melanoma Institute Australia (MIA) in 2022 as Chair of Melanoma Surgical Oncologythe study, diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
He is a clinical academic and his research work focuses on stagingthe process of determining how big the cancer is, where it started and if it has spread to other areas and treatment of melanoma, sentinel lymph nodea small lump or mass of tissue in your body biopsyremoval of a section of tissue to analyse for cancer cells (SLNB), locoregional therapies, adjuvant and neo-adjuvant strategies. He is also a Merkel Cell Carcinomacancer arising from tissues that line organs (MCC) expert.
Location
40 Rocklands Road, Wollstonecraft NSW, Australia
