Professor Swee Tan, Wellington, ONZM
For services to medicine. Professor Tan is the Director of Surgery and Consultant Plastic and Cranio-Maxillofacial Surgeon at Hutt Hospital, and Director of the Gillies McIndoe Institute, which is dedicated to research into birth defects, cancer and tissue engineering, based at Hutt Hospital. He is the founder and Director of the Centre for the Study and Treatment for Vascular Birthmarks, a national referral centre based at Hutt Hospital since 1996. He is well-known internationally for his research into the cause and treatment of disfiguring strawberry birth marks. In 2000 he and his team discovered a gene that causes the regression of this condition. His most recent discovery forms the basis for the use of anti-hypertensive drugs to induce tumour cells to ‘commit suicide’. This discovery opens up a new area of research into the cure for cancer. Professor Tan is widely published in peer-reviewed journals, is the immediate past President of the Australian and New Zealand Head and Neck Cancer Society.