Career Summary

Professor Paul Cohen is a Consultant at The Western Australian Gynaecological Cancer Service at King Edward Memorial Hospital; Clinical Professor in the Division of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Medical School; and Clinical Research Fellow at the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research, QEII Medical Centre and Centre for Medical Research, The University of Western Australia. Paul graduated with a degree in Physiological Sciences from Oxford University in 1997 and completed his medical training at Oxford in 2000. He moved to New Zealand in 2001 and completed specialist training in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at National Womens Hospital in Auckland. Paul undertook full time research in the molecular biology of ovarian granulosa cell tumours and was awarded a Doctorate in Medicine by the University of Auckland in 2010. He moved to Australia in 2010 to undertake a three-year clinical fellowship in gynaecological oncology and has been based in Perth, Western Australia since 2013.

Profile and Peer Recognition

Paul is the current Chair of the Australia and New Zealand Gynaecological Oncology Group (ANZGOG) Research Advisory Committee and a Director of ANZGOG, Chair of the International Gynecological Cancer Society (IGCS) Education Committee, an IGCS Board member.

Paul has served on Scientific Committees for the 17^th Biennial Meeting of the IGCS, Kyoto, Japan 2018, the 2021 IGCS Annual Global Meeting, the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) Asia Congress Gynaecological Cancers track, Singapore, 2022, and chaired the ANZGOG Annual Scientific Meeting Program Committee from 2018 to 2021.

Paul is a member of the Steering Committee of the Australian National Gynaecological Oncology Registry (NGOR), NGOR Ovarian Cancer Working Group, Ovarian Tumour Tissue Analysis (OTTA) Consortium, and the Australian eviQ National Guidelines Cancer Genetics Reference Committee. Paul is on the Editorial Boards of the International Journal of Gynecological Cancer and Scientifc Reports, and is a reviewer for journals including the Lancet and the Lancet Oncology. He was presented with awards by the International Journal of Gynecological Cancer for Top Editorial Board Member in 2019 and Top Reviewer in 2021.

Teaching

Paul has been actively involved in teaching 3rd year medical students at UWA and King Edward Memorial Hospital since 2013. He is a mentor for Year 3 clinical students and regularly gives lectures. He has been an Examiner in the Medical Student OSCE since 2014 and regularly teaches and assess medical students in a clinical setting. Paul won a UWA Excellence in Teaching Award in 2022. He has supervised four PhD students, three Masters’ students and three MD students.

Research

Paul's research focuses on chemotherapy resistance in high grade serous tubo-ovarian cancer. He was the lead investigator of an international collaboration that involved 16 sites in 11 countries that enabled an individual patient meta-analysis that showed the pathological chemotherapy response score (CRS) predicts survival in patients with advanced ovarian cancer receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy. The score identifies the roughly one-third of all patients who show significantly improved progression-free survival and overall survival and has potential for incorporation into routine practice and clinical trial design as an early endpoint. This work led to the incorporation of the CRS into the 2019 and 2024 joint European Society for Medical Oncology and European Society of Gynaecological Oncology consensus conference recommendations on ovarian cancer. 

Paul  is the Principal Investigator of a prospective national clinical trial "Getting the MOST out of follow-up: a randomised controlled trial to compare three-monthly nurse-led telephone follow-up, including monitoring serum CA125 and patient reported outcomes using the MOST (Measure of Ovarian Symptoms and Treatment concerns) with routine clinic-based follow-up, following completion of first-line chemotherapy in patients with epithelial ovarian cancer" (ACTRN12620000332921) funded by the WA Health Translation Network, the Medical Research Future Fund and ANZGOG.

He is a Chief Investigator on "Ovarian cancer: investigating Variation in care and survival, Aetiology and Risk factors to Improve outcomes in Australia via National data linkage: the OVARIAN study" and the ADELE study, "ADjuvant Tislelizumab plus chemotherapy after post-operative pelvic chemoradiation in high-risk EndometriaL cancer", funded by the Medical Research Future Fund.

Paul is the Australian Principal Investigator of an ANZGOG funded international randomised clinical trial "STRatIfication of Vulvar squamous cell carcinoma by HPV and p53 status to guide Excision: the STRIVE study" and an investigator on ‘Enabling advanced single cell cancer genomics in Western Australia’ (PI Professor Alistair Forrest, UWA) funded by the Cancer Research Trust.

He has published more than 130 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals.

Community Engagement

Paul conceived and organised Western Australia’s inaugural Familial Breast and Ovarian Cancer Information Day held in May 2016, which was attended by more than 140 BRCA mutation carriers and their families, and the subsequent Familial Breast and Ovarian Cancer Information Days in 2017, 2019, 2021, and 2023. He is a regular speaker at Ovarian Cancer Australia support group meetings, Cancer Council Western Australia Education events, ANZGOG Public Forums, and facilitated the inaugural Western Australian ANZGOG ‘Survivors Teaching Students’ in Western Australia in 2019.