Rate My Professor Guy Lyons

Guy Lyons is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Central Clinical School at the University of Sydney, Faculty of Medicine and Health, and serves as Associate Professor and Laboratory Head in the Centre for Cancer Innovations at the Centenary Institute. He obtained his PhD from the University of Sydney and completed postdoctoral training at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA, and Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France. Upon returning to Australia, he joined the Kanematsu Laboratories at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, affiliated with the University of Sydney, where he discovered that breast cancer invasion requires the coordinated action of two distinct cell types to produce matrix metalloproteinases and other enzymes that degrade surrounding tissues. From 2004 to 2005, he held a Senior Research Fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the laboratory of Dr. Silvio Gutkind, elucidating how epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in head and neck cancer cells generates a pro-inflammatory tumor microenvironment.

Since 2015, Associate Professor Lyons has led the Immune Imaging group at the Centenary Institute, focusing on cancers and diseases of stratified squamous epithelia, including those of the skin, oral cavity, and cornea. His research explores tumor immune microenvironments in cutaneous malignancies such as melanoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and basal cell carcinoma; UV-induced carcinogenesis; corneal epithelium stratification and wound healing; HPV-related oropharyngeal cancers; transdermal drug delivery; and preclinical models for lung squamous cell carcinoma and pancreatic cancer. Key publications include "Intravital imaging technology guides FAK-mediated priming in pancreatic cancer precision medicine according to Merlin status" (Science Advances, 2021), "Syngeneic animal models of tobacco-associated oral cancer reveal the contributions of tumor intrinsic and microenvironmental factors to collective invasion" (Nature Communications, 2019), "Regulation of ROCK1 via Notch1 during breast cancer cell migration" (BMC Cancer, 2012), "The Immune Microenvironment in Basal Cell Carcinoma" (2022), "Pre-clinical lung squamous cell carcinoma mouse models to identify novel biomarkers and therapeutic interventions" (2023), and "Non-invasive transdermal delivery of chemotherapeutic molecules in vivo using superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles" (2021). He received the Barry Preston Award from the Matrix Biology Society of Australia and New Zealand in 2024 and Tour de Cure cancer research funding in 2023. His contributions have amassed nearly 4,000 citations on ResearchGate, impacting fields of cancer biology, immunology, and epithelial disease research.