Professor Gráinne O’Kane
Professor Gráinne O’Kane is a Consultant Medical Oncologist at St Vincent’s University Hospital, Dublin, and a Professor at University College Dublin (UCD). She specialises in pancreatic and hepatobiliary cancers, with a strong emphasis on early-phase clinical trials, biomarker-led trial design, and translational research.
Professor O’Kane completed her oncology training at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Canada, where she subsequently held the roles of Clinician Investigator and Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto. In August 2024, she was appointed as the inaugural Pat Smullen Chair in Pancreatic Cancer at UCD which is an initiative supported by €900,000 from Cancer Trials Ireland’s Pat Smullen Pancreatic Cancer Fund, matched by the HSE’s National Cancer Control Programme. This role underpins the development of a global centre of excellence for pancreatic cancer research and treatment in Ireland.
Since returning home, Professor O’Kane has also worked as a Consultant Oncologist and served as Director of the Cancer Clinical Trials Unit at the Trinity St James’s Cancer Institute in Dublin.