Genomics operator. Building at the edge of RNA, AI and real-world medicine. Director @ramacgenomics | A/Prof @UNSWBABS | @UNSWRNA
Sydney, New South Wales
Joined April 2012
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Next Thursday at @UNSW Sydney:
Dr Ye Yin, CEO of @TheBgiGroup
Life Data as Infrastructure: AI and Multi-Omics in Health and Industry
45m lecture + panel/Q&A with Prof. John Mattick, Prof. Fatemeh Vafaee & Richard Harrison.
22 Oct | 11am–1pm | Free
Register: tinyurl.com/4jewu9da
🤖 Made with AI
Martin Smith retweeted
Thrilled to share that our international collaboration has just been published in Nature Medicine!
We analysed data from 1,038 patients across 26 centers worldwide treated with neoadjuvant immunotherapy for melanoma on trials and as standard therapy. It confirms what we’ve hoped: trial results translate into everyday practice.
Key findings:
*Patients whose tumors responded well to immunotherapy before surgery (a “major pathological response”) had outstanding 5-year survival: 98.8% with PD-1 therapy alone, 97.9% with combination therapy
*Continuing immunotherapy after surgery gave these responders no extra benefit
*Immunotherapy before surgery also worked in melanoma types that are traditionally harder to treat — BRAF-mutant, acral, in-transit, & oligometastatic disease
Our next step is to identify who needs less treatment (avoiding unnecessary toxicity) and who needs a different approach. This is real progress toward personalised care and being tested in the NeoIRENIE Trial.
Deep thanks to our incredible global team of collaborators.
Read here > rdcu.be/5v2zLTxGN18a
#MelanomaResearch #Immunotherapy #Oncology
@Sydney_Uni @syd_health @ausoftheyear @Science_Academy @FulbrightAUS @AAHMS_health @NthSydHealth
My family is taking on 7 Bridges Walk again to help those affected by cancer.
Having received @CancerCouncilOz funding myself and supporting others funded by them, I can testify to how impactful your donation is for advancing cancer care.
Donate here:
7bridgeswalk.com.au/s/36880/…
Martin Smith retweeted
Check out our new preprint on thousands of novel recursive exons in the human genome (if you don't know about recursive exons, they are pretty cool), led by PhD student David Bass: biorxiv.org/content/10.64898…
Martin Smith retweeted
Supercenternarians (living to or beyond 110 years) have an immune system adaptation of their T cells [CD4 CTL, killer lymphocytes]
sciencedirect.com/science/ar…
Genomics + AI + RNA is the formula.
Has been for years.
And it's much more than cancer vaccines.
Stay tuned
New data in ESMO Real World Data provides a decisive case for the immediate adoption of universal whole genome sequencing (WGS) as the standard of care in Australian oncology. 🧬🇦🇺
The study proves the diagnostic superiority of comprehensive whole genome and transcriptome sequencing (WGTS) over traditional, piecemeal panels using routine pathology tissue. For complex cases and cancers of unknown primary (CUP), this multi-omic approach significantly accelerates tissue-of-origin resolution and identifies actionable therapeutic biomarkers at first instance.
Replacing iterative panel testing with an upfront WGTS model eliminates the diagnostic odyssey and secures equitable access to precision medicine. To deliver truly modern cancer care, Australia must transition WGTS from a specialized utility to the national standard.
Read the study: esmorwd.org/article/S2949-82…
#PrecisionOncology #ClinicalGenomics #AusHealth #GenomicMedicine
We're live at Parliament House!
Introducing "CAR-seq" — Live sequencing on the Hume Highway. 🚨
I'm currently driving to Canberra for the UNSW Showcase at Parliament House this afternoon. To prove a point about how portable precision medicine has become, I have a pocket-sized MinION sequencer running live samples from the Ferrari Lab right next to me on the passenger seat.
Yesterday, I wrote in the @australian about Rosie, a dying pet dog who managed to get better access to advanced genomics than most human Australians. That should make us uncomfortable.
The technology isn't the roadblock anymore. It's the infrastructure.
The Reality Check:
🔹 Universal whole-genome sequencing would cost ~$510M/yr.
🔹 Australia's annual cancer spend is $19.7B.
🔹 Standardizing this care represents just 2.6% of our current spend.
This is a sovereignty issue. If we don't scale up the public infrastructure to connect genomics, AI, and RNA tech here, we will end up importing the future of healthcare later, on someone else's terms, at a premium.
MPs, Senators, and staffers: Come see the "CAR-seq" data live on my laptop at Mural Hall this afternoon.
Let’s change the system!
Read the piece here (paywalled): theaustralian.com.au/health/…
Introducing "CAR-seq" — Live sequencing on the Hume Highway. 🚨
I'm currently driving to Canberra for the UNSW Showcase at Parliament House this afternoon. To prove a point about how portable precision medicine has become, I have a pocket-sized MinION sequencer running live samples from the Ferrari Lab right next to me on the passenger seat.
Yesterday, I wrote in the @australian about Rosie, a dying pet dog who managed to get better access to advanced genomics than most human Australians. That should make us uncomfortable.
The technology isn't the roadblock anymore. It's the infrastructure.
The Reality Check:
🔹 Universal whole-genome sequencing would cost ~$510M/yr.
🔹 Australia's annual cancer spend is $19.7B.
🔹 Standardizing this care represents just 2.6% of our current spend.
This is a sovereignty issue. If we don't scale up the public infrastructure to connect genomics, AI, and RNA tech here, we will end up importing the future of healthcare later, on someone else's terms, at a premium.
MPs, Senators, and staffers: Come see the "CAR-seq" data live on my laptop at Mural Hall this afternoon.
Let’s change the system!
Read the piece here (paywalled): theaustralian.com.au/health/…
Sequencing is not just a test. It is the front door to the next cancer system.
My OpEd in @australian is online today, ahead of tomorrow’s @UNSW Showcase at Parliament House.
It begins with Rosie, a staffy cross with incurable cancer, but the broader argument is about national capability: #cancer #genomics as the foundation for better treatment decisions, faster clinical trial matching, #AI-enabled interpretation, #RNA therapeutics and smarter evidence around expensive new medicines.
Australia has the proof points. The challenge now is scale: making comprehensive cancer genomics routine, equitable and connected to the infrastructure needed to act on it.
Tomorrow I’ll be at Parliament House with @PalliThordarson discussing how Australia can build this system here, rather than import it later on someone else’s terms.
🔗theaustralian.com.au/health/…
RIP Rosie. Her journey has inspired many.
I'm hopeful that her legacy will resonate through increased adoption of precision medicine and improved cancer care for future patients.
Rosie passed on Saturday
4 weeks ago Rose had surgery that resulted in her cancer coming out of remission. By last Saturday her little body was very close to having enough - with rapidly expanding tumours all over her rear end
She was in pain and starting to become a different dog to the one I knew and loved
On Saturday, I made the very sad decision to put Rose to sleep
It was the hardest decision of my life and Rose fought all the way to the end. In a sad way she made me so proud
In the truest sense of the word: Rose was a pioneer. It is my hope that her contribution will lead to many people never having to face what I had to go through on Saturday - both humans and pets alike
I buried her with help from friends and family and she will be sorely missed
please send her your thoughts or prayers
love
Paul
Martin Smith retweeted
Everyone's arguing about NVIDIA export controls.
Almost nobody can name the 7 Chinese companies already shipping H100/H200-class silicon - most IPO'd in the last 6 months.
I run Chinese open models on a 4×3090 rig daily. So I drew the map nobody's drawing
UNSW is now ranked #1 in Australia and in the global top 20 (QS @TopUnis World University Rankings 2027). Exciting recognition of the outstanding research, innovation and collaboration across @UNSWBABS, the @UNSWScience #PathToImpact vision, and Centres like @ramacgenomics that accelerate translation and impact.
Martin Smith retweeted
Minibwa is a hybrid of bwa-mem and minimap2 and the successor of bwa-mem for short-read mapping. ~4X/2.5X as fast as bwa-mem/bwa-mem2 for WGS reads at comparable accuracy. Native support of directional bisulfite-seq. Applicable to long reads. Preprint at arxiv.org/abs/2606.15357
Martin Smith retweeted
I am sending an open letter to Thermo Fisher. Their response to my response to their manipulated western blot is bullying and petty. Yes, this western blot really is manipulated, it is unfair on me to say otherwise. I don't make those accusations lightly. #ThermoFishy
Martin Smith retweeted
May was a huge month in AI × biology. Here's a recap of the biggest stories. 🧵 (1/6)
Martin Smith retweeted
Our large scale foundation model already outperforms highly tuned smaller models, which bodes well for our ability to fundamentally compress the timeline from discovery to clinical application. This is the just the beginning. Leveraging foundation models has the potential to unlock the next generation of precision medicine - improving clinical decisions, optimizing trial design and allowing us to bring novel therapeutics to patients faster.
Today we shared announced initial results from our Multimodal Foundation Models for oncology, which leverage over 500 petabytes of patient data to accurately predict patient outcomes and deliver novel insights for precision medicine and drug development.
Read here: tempus.co/4nUv3wV #ASCO26
A reminder that impactful #genomics doesn't always require expensive infrastructure.
For this new preprint by @DavidHamelin7 et al, we developed a long-read HLA profiling workflow costing ~US$20 (~A$30) per sample using an @Opentrons OT-2 robot, enabling high-resolution profiling across 500+ participants.
The science: Using AI to understand how HLA diversity influences susceptibility to immune escape.
The bigger picture: personalised MHC modelling is becoming a key foundation for next-generation immunotherapies and #PrecisionMedicine
biorxiv.org/content/10.64898…
