Virtual Oral Presentation Australasian Society for Dermatology Research 2022 Annual Scientific Meeting

Dr. Boris Bastian received his MD degree and Dr. med degree from the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich. After completing a residency in dermatology at the University of Würzburg, he received additional training in dermatopathology and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cancer genetics at the University of California, San Francisco, before he joined the institution's faculty and started his research laboratory at UCSF’s Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center in 1999. In 2010 he moved to the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center as the Chairman of the Department of Pathology. In 2011 he returned to UCSF, as  Gerson and Barbara Bakar Distinguished Professor of Cancer Biology and Professor of Dermatology and Pathology. In 2015 he founded the Clinical Cancer Genomics Laboratory at UCSF, which performs molecular diagnostics for patients of the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and acted as its Executive Director until 2020. He has clinical responsibilities in the Dermatopathology Section of the Departments of Dermatology and Pathology, where he also oversees its molecular diagnostic laboratory.

Dr. Bastian’s research focuses on the molecular genetics of cutaneous neoplasms, with a particular emphasis on the discovery of genetic alterations useful for diagnosis, classification, and therapy. His laboratory has contributed to the discovery of several genetic alterations in melanocytic neoplasia that have advanced the understanding of the pathobiology of melanocytic neoplasms and are relevant for therapeutic and diagnostic purposes. He has proposed an integrated taxonomy of melanocytic neoplasms, that aligns different melanoma types with their respective precursor lesions. The framework has been adopted into the recently revised WHO classification of melanocytic neoplasms. He served as the President of the Society of Melanoma Research from 2010 to 2013 and has received numerous awards for his work including the election to the German National Academy of Sciences, the Lila Gruber Award for Cancer Research of the American Academy of Dermatology, and an Outstanding Investigator Award of the National Cancer Institute.