Rate My Professor George Wiggins

Dr George Wiggins is a Senior Research Fellow in the Mackenzie Cancer Research Group, Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine, University of Otago, Christchurch, Faculty of Medicine. He obtained his MSc from the University of Otago in 2012 with a thesis entitled 'The investigation for an ovarian cellular clock in mice' and later completed his PhD at the same institution. Following his master's degree, Wiggins worked for two years in Professor Parry Guilford's cancer research group in Dunedin, focusing on genetic markers that predict severe reactions to chemotherapy such as vomiting, dehydration, and diarrhoea. He then pursued his PhD under the supervision of Dr Logan Walker, investigating familial breast cancer and the reasons why BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic variations predominantly affect breast and ovarian tissues rather than other organs. His doctoral research was conducted at the University of Otago, Christchurch, benefiting from proximity to Christchurch Hospital and the Cancer Society tissue bank.

Wiggins' research specializations centre on cancer genetics, including the impact of germline copy number variants on endometrial, breast, and ovarian cancer risk, BRCA1 and BRCA2 splicing analysis, variant classification using ACMG/AMP frameworks, and gene expression studies. Key publications include 'Using the ACMG/AMP framework to capture evidence related to predicted and observed impact on splicing: Recommendations from the ClinGen SVI Splicing Subgroup' (Walker et al., 2023, The American Journal of Human Genetics), 'E-cadherin loss alters cytoskeletal organization and adhesion in non-malignant breast cells but is insufficient to induce an epithelial-mesenchymal transition' (Chen et al., 2014, BMC Cancer), 'Nanopore sequencing of full-length BRCA1 mRNA transcripts reveals co-occurrence of known exon skipping events' (de Jong et al., 2017, Breast Cancer Research), 'Evaluation of copy-number variants as modifiers of breast and ovarian cancer risk for BRCA1 pathogenic variant carriers' (Walker et al., 2017, European Journal of Human Genetics), and 'Deep learning segmentation of chromogenic dye RNAscope from breast cancer tissue' (Davidson et al., 2025, Journal of Imaging Informatics in Medicine). Career appointments progressed from postdoctoral research fellow to Senior Research Fellow. He has received the University of Otago Division of Health Sciences Accelerator Grant (2021), Canterbury Medical Research Foundation grant for novel prevention strategies (2025), and Cancer Research Trust NZ Professional Development Award (2025). Wiggins has presented at the Genetics Otago Annual Symposium and delivered public lectures on cancer insights, contributing to improved genetic testing accuracy and hereditary cancer risk assessment.