Pathologist
MBBS (Singapore), FRCPA (AU), FAMS (Singapore),
MD (Singapore), FRCPath (UK)
Prof Tan is our pathologist at Luma Medical Centre. She is a key opinion leader in breast and urologic pathology, with active academic involvement in these pathology subspecialties.
Research Interests
Being a passionate researcher, Prof Tan has published widely with over 500 peer reviewed scientific papers. She is a Standing Editorial Board Member for the 5th series of the WHO Classification of Tumours, IARC, Lyon, and is also an expert member for the Breast (2019) and Genitourinary (2022) volumes in this latest series. She was a Volume Editor for the WHO Classification of Tumours of the Breast 4th series (2012). Apart from a busy service largely focused on subspecialty surgical signouts, she has collaborated with many clinicians in translational studies of breast and prostate cancer. She participates regularly in regional and international meetings.
Her research interests in breast pathology centre around the classification of breast fibroepithelial lesions and their molecular pathogenesis, triple negative breast cancers, and ductal carcinoma in situ. In urologic pathology, she is engaged in prostate and renal cancer studies.
International Recognition
Prof Tan held several international and regional leadership positions and is internationally recognised. She is a Past President of the International Society of Breast Pathology (ISBP), the immediate Past Convenor of the Assembly of the Asia-Pacific International Academies of Pathology, the immediate Past President of the Asian Breast Diseases Association and was a previous Councillor for Asia of the International Society of Urological Pathology. She was conferred the Norton-ISBP award in 2020 for excellence in breast pathology.
Significant Contributions
Prof Tan has multiple appointments in local committees including for the Ministry of Health (MOH) Singapore. She was the 2015 recipient of the National Medical Excellence Award for Outstanding Clinician, and was a 2019 Distinguished Senior Clinician awardee, MOH.
She was a key member of the research team that discovered the role of the MED12 gene in breast fibroadenomas, leading to a proposed pathogenetic pathway for breast fibroepithelial tumours that encompassed the phyllodes tumour. A nomogram that she and collaborators developed and published in 2011 is used internationally to predict the recurrence risk likelihood of women diagnosed with breast phyllodes tumours.
She has supervised numerous students in research projects including several who pursued their Masters and PhD degrees. She is contributing to the International Collaboration on Cancer Classification and Research (IC3R) on refining the classification of breast phyllodes tumours and is a collaborator on an IARC project on evidence gap mapping of the WHO breast tumour classification. She is the series champion of breast cancer datasets formulated under the auspices of the International Collaboration on Cancer Reporting (ICCR).
Together with her colleague, she initiated a well-received annual breast pathology course drawing participants from the region and internationally since 2010. She is dedicated to diagnostic, research and educational excellence in breast and urological pathology, and is a strong advocate for building support for academic pursuits in these disciplines that can be translated to improving patient care.
