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Alexander C. van Akkooi, MD, PhD, MSc, FRACS (he/him/his)

Surgical Oncologist
Melanoma Institute of Australia
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia


Assoc. Prof. Dr. Alexander C.J. van Akkooi, MD, PhD, FRACS was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA. He has both American and Dutch nationalities.
He studied medicine at the Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, where he gained his MD title in 2008. During his surgical specialty training (2009-2014), he was awarded his PhD cum laude in 2011 on the thesis: “Sentinel Node Tumor Load Assessment in Melanoma: Dilemmas and Clinical Management”.
From 2015 – 2021 he was a staff consultant surgical oncologist at the Netherlands Cancer Institute – Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (NKI) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where he chaired the Melanoma and Skin Cancer Centre. He is a past-Chairman of the EORTC (European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer) Melanoma Group.
He is a current Fellow to the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (FRACS) within the Specialty of General Surgery within a defined scope of practice of Cutaneous Oncology.
He has served on multiple international committees, such as ASCO and ESMO. Prof. Dr. van Akkooi published over 275 peer reviewed papers (H index 47) in high impact journals (i.e. New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Lancet Oncol, Cell, Nature Med) and has presented at numerous (international) meetings. He joined the Melanoma Institute Australia (MIA) in 2022 as Chair of Melanoma Surgical Oncology.
As the global coordinating investigator, he has received a NHMRC (National Health and Medicine Research Council) grant of $ 3.2M AUD to perform the randomized phase 3 Multicenter Selective Lymphadenectomy Trial – 3 (MSLT-3); S2601/EORTC-2519 (NCT07049276).
He was awarded the 2025 SITC (Society of ImmunoTherapy for Cancer) Collaboration award as part of the INMC (International Neoadjuvant Melanoma Consortium) executive committee.
He is a clinical academic and his research work focuses on staging and treatment of melanoma, sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB), locoregional therapies, surgical de-escalation, adjuvant and neo-adjuvant strategies. He is also a Merkel Cell Carcinoma (MCC) expert.

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