Ross Stephens

Professor Ross Wentworth Stephens – a bio summary of my career after ABHS

My early career in science actually began at about age 11, when I watched my elder brother Malcolm doing some home chemistry experiments, and I started reading science from our family set of Richards Encyclopedia. We had an old garden shed and my first home experiments were done there amongst the spiders, mice and drums of fertiliser. Before commencing high school I was already reading my own chemistry textbooks, so in my first year at the recently completed Asquith Boys High School in 1960 I was well ahead of the science curriculum. At ABHS I was fortunate to have very knowledgeable science teachers, including Morris, Bragg and Ellis as well as an excellent mathematics master, Mr Ellis Reynolds. With their support I won class prizes and by my senior school years I was quite set on chemistry as my career choice, applied either in medical or industrial settings. 

After completing the Leaving Certificate in 1964, I enrolled in my first year of the Bachelor of Science degree courses at Sydney University. At Sydney Uni I embraced the rich atmosphere I found there; the fantastic co-op bookshop, the jazz club, the Renaissance Players (led by Winsome Evans), the endless discussions with good academic friends and of course the excellent lecturers in Chemistry (especially Dr Peter Simpson) and Biochemistry (especially Dr Michael Slaytor), who fed my scientific development. For majors in my third year, I chose Biochemistry supplemented with an advanced course in Organic Chemistry, and progressed to my Honours degree studies in Biochemistry in 1968. I was convinced that post-grad studies would open better opportunities for research in the biomedical field, so I commenced doctoral studies in nucleotide metabolism with Dr Vivian Whittaker in 1969, while gaining teaching experience at Sydney Uni as a lab tutor/demonstrator for biochemistry lab sessions for students enrolled in degree courses in science, pharmacy and medicine.

On completing my doctoral thesis, I was fortunate in 1974 to be offered a research position at the new Raymond Purves Research Laboratories (RPRL) located at the Royal North Shore Hospital, part of the Department of Surgery of Sydney Uni, and headed by Dr Peter Ghosh under Prof Tom Taylor. Tom was a noted spinal surgeon and attracted significant private as well as Federal Government support for new medical research. I became part of a multidisciplinary orthopaedic research team, and over the next six years worked on projects in rheumatoid and osteoarthritis, intervertebral disc degeneration and osteosarcoma. The hospital and surgery department environment at RNSH was intensely instructive in several ways.

My time at RPRL introduced me to tissue remodelling in inflammation and cancer, and after reading widely in those fields I realised I would only learn more by joining a leading laboratory overseas. In 1980 I wrote to Prof Keld Danø at the Tumourbiology Lab at Copenhagen University Hospital and was delighted to receive his invitation to join his research group in January 1981. Over the next 18 months at the Tumourbiology Lab I learnt many important concepts and techniques from studies of tumour cell mediated proteolysis, that were clearly fundamental for my developing career in cancer research.

I returned to Australia in mid 1982 to take up a research position in Canberra at the Department of Medicine and Clinical Science of the John Curtin School of Medical Research (JCSMR), at that time located at the Woden Valley Hospital, rather than the main campus of the Australian National University (ANU). There over the following four years I carried out research on inflammatory bowel disease and colon cancer, applying much of the knowledge I had gained in Copenhagen.

From my work, a collaboration developed with one of Australia’s early biotechnology companies, Biotechnology Australia Pty Ltd (Sydney) and this enabled a dedicated project on the monocyte protein called plasminogen activator inhibitor type 2 (PAI-2). The project’s significance was recognised by an award of a Commonwealth biotechnology grant, and led to some of the first biotechnology patents from biomedical research at the ANU.

Despite this progress, my position at ANU was not tenured, so in 1986 I again approached research acquaintances overseas, and Prof Antti Vaheri, Director of the Department of Virology at Helsinki University Hospital, responded with a research position in his advanced cell biology lab. Initially a short-term visiting appointment, the collaborative and dynamic research environment there encouraged me to stay over five years (1987-1992) and produced some of my most-cited publications on mechanisms employed by tumour cells to invade normal tissues and metastasise.

After many years in University Hospital positions, a pharmaceutical industry position was then offered to me by Nycomed Pharma (Oslo), where a research program led by Dr Kjell Sakariassen was aimed at finding new anti-thrombosis drugs. This program position lasted just three years (1992-1995), but gave me valuable knowledge and experience in the blood coagulation system and thrombosis fields, that was to serve me well in my later career back in Australia.

On leaving Nycomed in 1995 I took up a group leader position with old friends at the Finsen Laboratory, University of Copenhagen Hospital, where Prof Keld Danø was now the Research Director. Several exciting cancer projects were underway, and I led a group studying tumour cell markers with a view to clinical diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic applications. Once again, I enjoyed working in a very productive university hospital research environment, and our work was well received through conferences and publications. 

Passing my 50th birthday in Denmark though, I felt I should return to Australia and take up a suitable senior role in my home country. However, in 1999 when I tried to find a stable senior research position in Australia to return to, this actually proved very difficult; my research standing and extensive knowledge and experience in Europe seemed of no help at all and everywhere I inquired drew a blank. Finally, I reluctantly accepted a junior technology transfer job at the ANU to make my return possible. Doing my best with this desk-bound job for one year, I left to do remote work from home for the Finsen Lab (who hoped I would return!) and freelance consulting work in Australia, sometimes unpaid. Just one project at ANU’s Research School of Physics and Engineering emerged in 2001 that was of some biomedical interest, but that was only to bear fruit much later.

In the meantime, I was recruited by Progen Industries (Brisbane) to the position of Vice-President for Scientific Development, tasked with evaluating University biomedical projects around Australia as potential in-licensing opportunities for Progen’s commercial development. This was not an easy task, but I found a promising liver cancer project led by Prof David Morris at the University of New South Wales at St George Hospital that Progen took up and pursued for some years.

After that one-year contribution at Progen I returned to Canberra to lead biomedical development of the ANU carbon nanoparticle project that dated back to Dr Bill Burch’s ANU discovery of Technegas in the early 1980’s. In 1998 Rod Browitt, working with Dr Tim Senden, had found a way to make a stable aqueous dispersion of the radiolabelled carbon nanoparticles, meaning it then had new promise as an injectable imaging agent for blood clots and potentially also solid tumours. This nascent biomedical project gained the interest of Dr Steve Jones, Global Head of R&D at Sirtex Medical in Sydney, leading in 2006 to commencement of a really successful collaboration I had with Sirtex that was to last over 10 years. In 2013 Sirtex sponsored a personal Chair for me at ANU to continue as leader of the Biomedical Radiochemistry Laboratory (BRL) where my small team worked on several microparticle approaches to internal radiation therapy of solid tumours. Finally, I retired from this position in 2017, as I approached my 70th birthday, but Dr Jones started a new company, Remy Therapeutics (Sydney), to commercially develop one of the BRL inventions for cancer therapy, while China Grand Pharma licensed from ANU a sepsis drug candidate identified in a project I initiated at JCSMR, based on my 2009 concept of a new approach to the treatment of severe sepsis.

So I can look back on my research career in biomedical research with much gratitude for the opportunities I had of working with some really amazing medical scientists and students, who strived together to uncover the mysteries of human disease and to find new ways to treat them.

Along the way I lived in five different cities and worked on over 180 original research publications and became an inventor on 15 granted USA patents; this earned me a membership of the National Academy of Inventors (USA). However, I always saw my primary aim in biomedical research as discovering new means of providing better clinical outcomes for cancer patients.

Believe me, I could never have dreamt of such a career that lay ahead when I left ABHS in 1964!

Canberra, May 2025