Rate My Professor Helen Rizos

Professor Helen Rizos leads the Precision Cancer Therapy research team and is the Principal Investigator of the Macquarie University Cancer Biobank in the Macquarie School of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences at Macquarie University. She serves as Deputy Dean Research and Innovation in the Faculty. Rizos graduated with a Bachelor of Science (Honours Class I) from the University of New South Wales and completed her PhD at Macquarie University. She joined the Melanoma Research Group at the Westmead Institute for Medical Research in 1995 and became an independent group leader in 2000. As a faculty member of the Melanoma Institute Australia, she co-leads the Advanced Melanoma research theme. Rizos joined Macquarie University in 2013 and was Head of the Department of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences from 2014 to 2021. She has been awarded Senior Research Fellowships from the Cancer Institute NSW and NHMRC.

Rizos has made major contributions to understanding melanoma oncogenic signaling and mechanisms of response and resistance to systemic therapies. Seminal findings include the role of intratumoural heterogeneity in conferring resistance to targeted therapies, the continued clinical activity of targeted therapies beyond disease progression, the value of circulating tumour DNA in predicting survival and pseudoprogression for melanoma patients on immunotherapy, and ctDNA as prognostic in high-risk stage III melanoma. Her current research interests encompass defining liquid biomarker signatures that identify patients at high risk of recurrence or treatment resistance, examining mechanisms of treatment response and resistance, identifying new approaches to overcome resistance, and developing new models to support cancer research and clinical care. Awards include the Jim Piper Award for Excellence in Research Leadership (2023) and the Wildfire Highly Cited Publication Award (2017). Key publications include 'Prednisolone modulates CD8⁺ and regulatory T-cell activity to dampen response to immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy in melanoma' (2026), 'A scoping review of factors influencing the implementation of liquid biopsy for cancer care' (2025), 'Circulating IFNγ-associated protein signatures predict response to neoadjuvant immunotherapy in patients with stage III melanoma' (2025), and 'Circulating MicroRNAs: functional biomarkers for melanoma prognosis and treatment' (2025).