Dr Peter Ang is a Senior Consultant Medical Oncologist at OncoCare Cancer Centre. His clinical expertise includes the treatment of breast cancer, breast cancer genetics, young-onset breast cancer, and lung cancer. He has over 30 years of clinical experience.
Dr Peter Ang graduated from the National University of Singapore in 1991. He obtained his Master of Medicine (Internal Medicine) and Membership of the Royal College of Physicians (United Kingdom) in 1997. In 2000, he was awarded the Ministry of Health Manpower Development Programme (HMDP) Scholarship to train at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA.
His training was in general oncology with a particular focus on breast cancer and cancer genetics. He had also qualified with the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) certifying exam for medical oncologists. In 2001, he was one of the first to qualify for the Familial Cancer Risk Assessment and Management Exam certification by the Institute of Clinical Evaluation for the practice of cancer genetics.
Before entering private practice, he was a Senior Consultant Medical Oncologist and Director of the Cancer Education Service (2004) at the National Cancer Centre, Singapore. He was also a visiting consultant to KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital to support the setup of the cancer genetics service, which sees breast, ovarian, and other gynaecological cancer patients. Recognised for his leadership and expertise as a breast cancer specialist doctor, he was the leading cancer specialist of the Breast Cancer Workgroup (2002) for the National Cancer Centre, Singapore, and the SingHealth cluster. He was involved in implementing the cluster Breast Cancer Health Management Plan (2003), incorporating the best breast cancer information with his team of doctors.
Dr Peter Ang was the program leader for Public Cancer Education with SingHealth Cancer Service Development Line (2004). In clinical work, he was awarded the National Excellent Service Award (EXSA) in 2005. He was involved in providing comprehensive oncology information and excellent care for patients with a wide range of cancers, including lung cancer, stomach cancer, colorectal cancer, lymphoma, kidney cancer, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, uterine cancer, and cervical cancer.
He was the editor and main author of a book on breast cancer, “Illustrative Cases in Breast Cancer” (2006). As an active researcher and cancer specialist, Dr Ang has also been a reviewer for several reputable medical journals, including the American Journal of Clinical Oncology, the World Journal of Surgical Oncology, Annals of the Academy of Medicine Singapore, and the Oncology Journal.
He has investigated with collaborators on breast cancer in young women younger than 35 years, non-small cell lung cancer using chemoradiotherapy, irinotecan (CPT-11 or Camptosar) in colorectal cancer patients, gemcitabine with pegylated liposomal doxorubicin (Caelyx, Doxil) as first-line chemotherapy in Asian women with metastatic breast cancer, lapatinib for HER2-positive locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer, and pharmacogenomic and pharmacogenetic studies in Asian breast cancer patients for drugs like doxorubicin, vorinostat and others.
Dr Ang has been a speaker for the Breast Cancer Foundation, the Association of Women Doctors of Singapore, and the Singapore Cancer Society. Recognised as an authority in breast cancer, he was one of the speakers for the first Singapore Medical Oncology Review Course (2007) and the first regional Asian Oncology Summit (2009). He was also one of the regional keynote speakers at the Asia Breast Cancer Collaborative Group Meeting in 2010 and Guangzhou International Breast Cancer Symposium.
He has been actively involved in clinical and translational cancer research for many years, in breast, colon, lung, and other cancers. These have involved international trials of chemotherapy drugs currently in active use and newer targeted therapy drugs such as Herceptin, lapatinib, and sunitinib. He was the principal investigator for more than 10 clinical trials.
Research work by Dr Ang has been published in both local and international journals, including the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Chest, Lancet Oncology, Seminars in Oncology, Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention, Clinical Cancer Research, Clinical Genetics, Pharmacogenomics, and Respiratory Medicine. His work on “Breast-cancer risk in families with mutations in PALB2” was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. (N Engl J Med. 2014 Oct 23;371(17):1650-1)
Dr Ang is fluent in English, Mandarin, Hokkien, and Teochew dialects. He speaks some Malay and Bahasa and has looked after many Indonesian and Malay patients. He has also looked after Vietnamese, Russian, Myanmar, and Cambodian patients as well, with the help of interpreters.
