Peter Mac to lead studies after $6m in MRFF grants
3 min read 28 June 2023
Researchers from Peter Mac have received grants valued at more than $6 million from the Medical Research Futures Fund to improve cancer care.
Peter Mac will lead two large collaborative studies, one utilising artificial intelligence to identify emerging infections in cancer patients and the other to create a digital platform to drive research in areas of need.
The Medical Research Future Funds aims to support a range of research to improve the health of Australians. Peter Mac researchers received more than six million in funding as part of the National Critical Research Infrastructure initiative designed to identify and fund world-class health and medical research.
Associate Professor Leon Worth, Medical Director Infection Prevention at Peter Mac will lead a project called “Applying artificial intelligence for surveillance of infections in cancer.”
“This project uses a next-generation digital platform termed EINSTEIN (Enhancing Infection Surveillance to Transform Excellence In National cancer care) and draws on a digital learning health framework and data science to detect serious and emerging infections in the immune compromised cancer population,” said Associate Professor Worth.
“People being treated for cancer are at a greater risk of infection due to their compromised immune system and often the infection is harder to treat for the same reason.
“The earlier we can detect and treat an infection the greater our chance of stopping it from becoming life threatening. With this platform we aim to develop a national scalable system standardising digital algorithms.
“The data will be incorporated into a clinical portal to accommodate everyday workflows in an electronic health record environment to assist clinical decision making around infection surveillance in the real world,” he said.
This project is led by Peter Mac in collaboration with the University of Queensland, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, BioGrid Australia Limited, Melbourne Health and Royal Melbourne Hospital.
Professor Karin Thursky also received a grant of close to three million dollars to lead a project called “Optimising real-world data use to drive cancer care delivery and research.”
The project involves a multidisciplinary team of clinicians, consumers, and researchers from health services, cancer cohorts, and digital health to establish a new research infrastructure.
“The National Cancer Cohort Platforms will be a significant Australian digital asset that will bring together several influential national cancer cohort studies into one location, including linkages to biospecimen repositories, and familial pedigrees,” said Professor Thursky.
The collaboration between KConFab, Australian Ovarian Cancer Study, Variants in Practice (ViP) Study, Lifepool, and Melanoma Research Victoria cancer cohort studies as well as BioGridD Australia, the Department of Health Services Research at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and the VCCC Alliance, is the first of its kind.
“This initiative will drive research by making these valuable clinical assets widely available to consumers, patients, clinicians and researchers in Australia and internationally, with a view toward their sustainability and interoperability.
“This approach provides a real opportunity to make progress in areas of unmet need in cancer, and to harness the power of big data, including the development of a platform that will meet our future needs,” she said.
Also collaborating on MRFF grants are Dr Stephen Wong who will assist in a project led by La Trobe University and Professor Michael Hofman and Associate Professor Grace Kong who will supply Pb-212 generators for a study led by AdvanCell.