Dr Benjamin Chuah

Dr Benjamin Chuah (patients often address him as Dr Ben Chuah) is a Senior Medical Oncologist at OncoCare Cancer Centre.

His subspecialty interests are in Gastrointestinal Cancers including oesophageal, gastric, biliary tract, pancreatic, liver (hepatocellular carcinoma), neuroendocrine cancers, and colorectal cancers. He has more than 25 years of clinical practice.

After graduating in medicine from Trinity College Dublin in 1998 where he was awarded the Professor Prize in Physic (Surgery) and the Arthur Ball Prize (2nd Place), Dr Chuah returned to Singapore and obtained his Membership in the Royal College of Physicians of the United Kingdom in 2002.

Before entering private practice, Dr Benjamin Chuah was actively involved in both post-graduate teaching and research. He was the Director of Postgraduate Medical Education (Medical Oncology) and was a Core Faculty for the Residency Program (Internal Medicine). He was awarded the National University Hospital Postgraduate Teaching Excellence Award in 2011 for his efforts.

He was also involved in clinical and translational research for many years. He was the principal or co-investigator in international trials involving novel and targeted therapy drugs for colorectal and pancreatic cancer.

As a clinical cancer specialist and researcher, his research work includes small cell gallbladder cancer with paraneoplastic hyponatremia, exploring the lack of somatic mutations in VEGFR-2 tyrosine kinase domain in hepatocellular carcinoma, renal cell carcinoma (kidney cancer) with bony metastases and use of the chemotherapy drug, docetaxel (Taxotere) with or without ketoconazole in breast cancer. He has published on screening in colorectal cancer and was involved in a randomized, phase 2 study of ganitumab or conatumumab in combination with FOLFIRI (5-FU, leucovorin, irinotecan) for second-line treatment of mutant KRAS metastatic colorectal cancer.

He was awarded the NUH Innovative Grant for research in warfarin pharmacogenomics and was also honoured with the inaugural Kobayashi Foundation Award for work done on serial changes in the expression of breast cancer-related proteins in response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy. His research work has led to several 1st author publications in high-impact medical and oncology journals including Gastroenterology, GUT, and Annals of Oncology.

Dr Ben is fluent in spoken English, Mandarin, Malay, and Bahasa Indonesia.