Dr Ankur Sharma’s Onco-Fetal Ecosystem Laboratory is primarily affiliated with Perkins’ Cancer Program, and has secondary affiliation with our Genome Biology and Genetics Program.

Ankur Sharma is a Lab Head of the Onco-Fetal Ecosystem Laboratory at Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research and women’s cancer senior fellow at Curtin Medical School, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia. Ankur’s research is directed towards exploring the similarities between fetal and tumor microenvironment. He is specifically interested in understanding the Onco-Fetal reprogramming of the tumor ecosystem. He is also investigating the co-evolution of the tumor and its microenvironment under various selection pressures (Immuno/chemo-therapy). Ankur obtained his Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. In 2015, he joined Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) ASTAR as a post-doctoral fellow. He was one of the earlier adopters of single-cell genomics to understand the impact of various selection pressures (chemotherapy/immunotherapy) on the evolution and ecosystem of tumors. In 2019, he was awarded the NMRC Young Investigator fellowship and in 2020, was appointed as a Research Scientist at Spatial and Single Cell Systems Domain at GIS, ASTAR. Ankur’s work led to the discovery of oncofetal reprogramming of tumor ecosystem in liver cancer (Sharma et al., Cell 2020). At Perkins, his team is working towards uncovering similar paradigms in other solid tumors. He is a member of a multidisciplinary Human Cell Atlas (HCA) team to build the liver atlas from development to disease and Liver Cancer Collaborative WA. Ankur is among the first members of the 10x Genomics Visium Clinical Translational Research Network (CTRN). At Perkins, the work of the Onco-Fetal Ecosystem Lab is determined to take discoveries from single-cell genomics into the clinic. Ankur received the best Ph.D. thesis award in 2014, GIS-clinical partnership award in 2019, Conquer Cancer The ASCO Foundation Merit Award in 2019, and UBC Science co-op Supervisor Recognition Award in 2019.