About

MBBS (S’pore), MRCP (UK), FAMS (Medical Oncology). Dr John Chia is a medical oncologist practicing at Curie Oncology, Singapore.

Qualifications

MBBS from the National University of Singapore in 1999. Membership of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh in 2002. In 2008, Dr. Chia undertook his postgraduate fellowship in the field of immunotherapy for solid tumours, namely in the development of dendritic cancer vaccines, adoptive T cell therapy, and immune biomarker monitoring for cancers. In 2011 and 2012, he completed a second fellowship with Professor Stan Kaye at The Royal Marsden Hospital London for the Advanced Management of Gynaecological cancers.

Awards and publications

Dr. John Chia graduated with double distinctions in Medicine and Surgery from the National University of Singapore. Very early on in his career, he was actively engaged with the then nascent field of immunotherapy for solid cancers, and heavily involved with the leadership or development of 7 immunotherapy clinical trials in Singapore. Dr. Chia is extremely active in clinical trial research, and has developed numerous research protocols and trials for ovarian, cervical, colorectal, nasopharyngeal, and breast cancer. He has published widely in leading international journals, and holds numerous local and international research grants exceeding $10,000,000 – for clinical research exploring immune checkpoint inhibitors, cancer vaccines, T cell therapy, chemoprevention with aspirin, and small molecule inhibitors for cancer. In 2010, he was awarded ‘Best Poster’ for a tumour-specific cancer vaccine trial at the European Society of Medical Oncology, Milan (amongst several thousand submissions), and more recently ‘Best Poster’ at ESMO Asia 2017, for his clinical trial in aggressive ovarian cancer.

Membership

Dr. Chia was the former chief of the gynaecology oncology service in the Division of Medical Oncology at the National Cancer Centre Singapore. He is also a founding board member of the Gynecologic Cancer Group Singapore, and the chair of its scientific subcommittee. He is also a council member of the College of Clinician Scientists at the Academy of Medicine, Singapore, and an adjunct associate professor at DUKE-NUS Medical School. He also sits on the executive committee of the Singapore Society of Oncology (SSO) and their Cancer Immunotherapy Consortium, aiming to promote access, recruitment, and immune monitoring and toxicity management for patients on immunotherapeutic treatments in Singapore.