Narayanan Gopalakrishna IYER
Head & Senior Consultant, Division of Surgery & Surgical Oncology, Department of Head and Neck Surgery, Singapore General Hospital & National Cancer Centre Singapore
Head, Division of Medical Sciences, National Cancer Center Singapore
Professor, Duke-NUS Medical School
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Year |
Award |
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2025 |
Singapore Translational Research Investigator Award, National Medical Research Council |
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2024 |
Distinguished Visionary Leader Award, Singhealth Excellence Awards |
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2024 |
Visiting Professor, Head and Neck Service, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, USA |
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2023 |
Covid-19 Resilience Medal, Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore |
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2019 |
Clinician-Scientist Award (Senior Investigator), National Medical Research Council |
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2018 |
Distinguished Researcher Award, Singhealth Excellence Awards |
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2018 |
Visiting Professor, Head and Neck Service, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, USA |
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2016 |
Clinician-Scientist Award, National Medical Research Council |
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2015 |
Visiting Professor, Head and Neck Service, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, USA |
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2014 |
Outstanding Faculty Award, Residency in Singhealth Excels |
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2013 |
Soo Khee Chee Publication Award, Singhealth Foundation |
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2013 |
Wong Hock Boon Society Outstanding Mentor Award, National University of Singapore |
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2013 |
Clinician-Scientist Award, National Medical Research Council |
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2012 |
Singhealth Publish Medical Research Publication Award |
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2012 |
Proctored/supervised first ever robotic thyroidectomy in Australia at Macquarie University Hospital, Sydney on 3rd Feb 2012 |
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2011 |
SingHealth Talent Development Fund Medical Research Publication Award |
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2010 |
Michael E Burt award for operative, clinical, teaching and research excellence from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center – awarded to the best fellow overall in the Division of Surgery |
Gopal established the institutional head and neck cancer database that has morphed into ‘real-time’ prospective data collection using the REDCAP database system which annotates various tissue/specimens collected for his research. He is the principal investigator of the Cancer Therapeutics Research Laboratory. Given the major paradigm shifts in the last 5 years, his lab has since evolved to have a major focus on cancer immunology and cell therapy for solid tumours.
One of the major drivers of his research is access to specific clinical tissue and the development of ex vivo models to study the therapeutic response. They have also established a few state-of the art technologies on-site and collaborate extensively with groups in Duke-NUS Medical School, A-STAR and the National University of Singapore, as well as prestigious overseas institutions such as Karolinska Institute, Westlake Institute and Cambridge University.
Given his team’s recent successes in the pre-clinical domain with therapeutics discovery and development (encompassing novel biologics and cell therapy), their main objective in the next few years is to translate these into the clinic through clinical trials, biomarker discovery and further optimisation of these therapeutics, through an iterative process.
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1.      SY Toh, HS Leong, FT Chong, DM Rodrigues-Junior, XL Kwang, DPX Lau, PH Lee, AL Vettore, BT Teh, DSW Tan, NG Iyer.  Therapeutic application of extracellular vesicular EGFR isoform D as a co-drug strategy to target squamous cell cancers with tyrosine kinase inhibitors.  Developmental Cell, 59(16): 2189-2202 (2024)  2.      C Adine, K Fernando, NCW Ho, HS Quah, SSW Ho, KWW Teng, C Arcinas, L Li, K Ha, JWL Chew, C Wang, NSH Too, H Bhuvaneswari, R Nagadia, JPS Yeong, NG Iyer, ELS Fong.  Bioengineered hydrogels enhance ex vivo preservation of patient-derived tumor explants for drug evaluation.  Biomaterials, 305: 122460 (2024)  3.      HS Quah, EY Cao, L Suteja, CH Li, HS Leong, FT Chong, S Gupta, C Arcinas, JF Ouyang, V Ang, T Celhar, Y Zhao, HC Tay, J Chan, T Takahashi, DSW Tan, SK Biswas, OJL Rackham, NG Iyer.  Single cell analysis in head and neck cancer reveals potential immune evasion mechanisms during early metastasis.  Nature Communications, 14(1): 1680 (2023)  4.      DWT Lim, HF Kao, L Suteja, CH Li, HS Quah, DSW Tan, SH Tan, EH Tan, WL Tan, JN Lee, FYT Wee, A Jain, BC Goh, MLK Chua, BC Liao, QS Ng, RL Hong, MK Ang, JPS Yeong, NG Iyer.  Clinical efficacy and biomarker analysis of dual PD-1/CTLA-4 blockade in recurrent/metastatic EBV-associated nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Nature Communications, 14(1): 2781 (2023)  5.      Y Sun, S Selvarajan, Z Zang, W Liu, Y Zhu, H Zhang, W Chen, H Chen, L Li, X Cai, H Gao, Z Wu, L Chen, X Teng, Y Zhao, X Teng, S Mantoo, TKH Lim, B Hariraman, S Yeow, SMFS Abdillah, SS Lee, G Ruan, Q Zhang, T Zhu, W Wang, G Wang, J Xiao, Y He, Z Wang, W Sun, Y Qin, Q Xiao, X Zheng, L Wang, X Zheng, K Xu, Y Shao, K Liu, S Zheng, R Aebersold, Z Li, OL Kon, NG Iyer, T Guo. Artificial intelligence defines protein-based classification of thyroid nodules. Cell Discovery, 8(1): 85 (2022)  6.      A Sharma, EY Cao, HS Leong, V Kumar, N Ramakrishnan, AML Wong, M Hakimullah, X Zhang, HM Teo, FT Chong, S Chia, MT Thangavelu, XL Kwang, DSW Tan, R Gupta, JR Clark, G Periyasamy, NG Iyer, R DasGupta. Longitudinal single-cell RNA sequencing of patient-derived primary cells reveals drug-induced infidelity in stem-cell hierarchy. Nature Communications, 9: 4931 (2018)   7.      Rasheed SAK, Leong HS, Lakshmanan M, Raju A,Dadlani D, Chong FT, Shannon NB, Rajarethinam R, Skanthakumar T, Tan EY, Hwang JSG, Lim KH, Tan DSW, Ceppi P, Wang M, Tergonkar V, Casey PJ, Iyer NG. GNA13 expression promotes drug resistance and tumor-initiating phenotypes in squamous cell cancers. Oncogene, 37(10): 1340-1353 (2018)  8.      Chia S, Low JL, Zhang X, Kwang XL, Chong FT, Sharma A, Bertrand D, Toh SY, Leong HS, Thangavelu MT, Hwang JSG, Lim KH, Skanthakumar T, Tan HK, Su Y, Choo SH, Hentze H, Tan IBH, Lezhava A, Tan P, Tan DSW, Periyasamy G, Koh JLY, Iyer NG, DasGupta R. Phenotype-driven precision oncology as a guide for clinical decisions one patient at a time. Nature Communications, 8(1): 435 (2017)   9.      Tan DSW, Chong FT, Leong HS, Toh SY, Lau DP, Kwang XL, Zhang XQ, Sundaram GM, Tan GS, Chang MM, Chua BT, Lim WT, Tan EH, Ang MK, Lim TKH, Sampath P, Chowbay B, Skanderup AJ, DasGupta R, Iyer NG. Long noncoding RNA EGFR-AS1 mediates epidermal growth factor receptor addiction and modulates treatment response in squamous cell carcinoma. Nature Medicine, 23(10): 1167-1175 (2017)  10.  Vettore AL, Ramnarayanan K, Poore G, Lim K, Ong CK, Huang KK, Leong HS, Chong FT, Lim TKH, Lim WK, Cuctcutche I, Mcpherson JR, Suzuki Y, Zhang, S, Skanthakumar T, Wang W, Tan DSW, Cho BC, Teh BT, Rozen S, Tan P, Iyer NG. Mutational landscapes of tongue carcinoma reveal recurrent mutations in genes of therapeutic and prognostic relevance. Genome Medicine, 7(1): 98 (2015) |