Prof Chantrill is a Senior Staff Specialist Medical Oncologist and Head of Service for Medical Oncology across the Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District (ISLHD), and Area Clinical Director of Clinical Trials.

Prof Chantrill treats patients with any cancers of the digestive tract as well as gynaecological cancers and lung cancers.

She is a key opinion leader and expert in the field of pancreas cancer.  Lorraine completed a PhD by research in the Pancreas Cancer Group at The Kinghorn Cancer Centre in pancreas cancer genomics.  Lorraine continues to be an active clinician researcher trying to bridge the gap between the bench and the bedside.

She has extensive experience managing Oncology Clinical Trials and is the Principal Investigator on several clinical trials in gastrointestinal cancers.  Lorraine is keen to increase the number of clinical trials conducted in the Illawarra and Shoalhaven Local Health District.  She believes clinical trials are not only vital for research but offer hope to participants.  Lorraine is keen to build the region’s clinical trial portfolio to give patients access to some new and emerging therapies.

AGITG role: The Australasian Gastro-Intestinal Trials Group (AGITG) create and facilitate clinical trials in cancers of the digestive tract.

Lorraine has served on the AGITG Upper GI Working party since inception in 2011 and has chaired the Working Party 2014-2019.  She was appointed to the Board of Directors of the Australian Gastro-Intestinal Trial Group (AGITG) in August 2016 and in May 2020 became the first female Chair of the AGITG and GI cancer institute.

Career achievements:  In the late 1980s Lorraine went to the Oxford University Institute of Molecular Medicine in the early days of genome sequencing.  She worked alongside scientists who were extracting DNA out of skeletons in the British Museum using the polymerase chain reaction technique to amplify the DNA and then sequence it.

Lorraine has also worked as a member of one of the first research teams to look at a link between cervical cancer and the human papillomavirus.  This research pre-dated the work of Australia’s Professor Ian Frazer and team and the University of Queensland to develop the Gardasil vaccine now used in the national school vaccination program.

Prof Chantrill and her team has raised more than $1million for clinical trials across Australia in the last 3 years.