Finlay Macrae AO
Professor Finlay Macrae AO has a career long interest in prevention of and screening for colorectal cancer. His MD in the 1970-80s explored quantitative patterns of bleeding from colorectal cancers and adenomas, underpinning the screening approach by FOBT. Fin has been on advisory roles to the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program continuously since then. Fin co-lead the Australian Polyp Prevention Project RCT which showed an impact on advanced adenomas with a low fat, high wheat bran diet - still a key study for Australia's dietary guidelines. More recently, he has lead the Australian contribution to the CaPP RCTs of aspirin in Lynch Syndrome, which have informed world guidelines chemoprevention of cancer.
In 2024, he reported promising results of the investigator-initiated AusFAP RCT of butyrylated starch in FAP at a plenary session at DDW. Fin's team at RMH manage and lead several Variant Curation Expert Panels (MMR, APC etc) for the NIH's ClinGen program, built on his 15 year experience in variant curation with InSiGHT .Fin established and chairs ANZGITA which builds capacity in gastroenterology across the Pacific and beyond. He was awarded GESA's Distinguished Service Medal (1999), its Distinguished Researcher Prize (2021) and Master of the World Gastroenterology Organization (2013).