The National Centre for Infections in Cancer (NCIC)

Innovation Lead – Internationally regarded leader in novel diagnosis, treatment, and management of difficult to treat and rare invasive fungal infections in the immune compromised host.

Professor Monica Slavin is an Infectious Diseases physician with extensive experience spanning 35 years. Monica is the Director of the Infectious Diseases Unit at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and leads the Infections in the Immunocompromised Host Service at Royal Melbourne Hospital. Additionally, she directs the NHMRC-funded Centre of Research Excellence, the National Centre for Infections in Cancer (NCIC).

Internationally recognized for her expertise, Professor Slavin focuses on identifying risk factors and improving early diagnosis and prevention of infections in immunocompromised patients. Her ground-breaking research has led to significant advancements in clinical practice, including new management guidelines and diagnostic tools. Notably, her studies on antifungal prophylaxis and diagnostic strategies in aspergillosis have influenced global practice and improved patient outcomes.

Professor Slavin's contributions extend beyond research to teaching and clinical medicine. She has authored numerous publications and played key roles in developing guidelines for managing invasive fungal infections. Her leadership in professional societies and invited lectures further highlight her influence in the field.

Despite primarily working as a hospital-based clinician, Professor Slavin has built an impressive research portfolio, secured substantial funding and publishing extensively. Her impact is evident from her high citation count and recognition as a top author in the field of microbiology and in the top 10 researchers globally on invasive fungal infections (expertscape).

Implementation lead – Implementing lifesaving and harm minimising clinical care pathways for the management of infections in the immunocompromised individual.

Professor Karin Thursky is a renowned infectious diseases physician and health services researcher with over 20 years of experience. She specializes in antimicrobial stewardship and infections in immunocompromised individuals. As the inaugural Associate Director of Health Services Research and Implementation Science at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, she leads initiatives in digital health, implementation science, and health economics in cancer care. Her research spans infectious diseases, clinical epidemiology, antimicrobial stewardship, and advanced analytics techniques like machine learning. She is also dedicated to mentoring emerging clinician and health services researchers, supervising students, and postdocs from various backgrounds.

Surveillance lead - Establishing a national infrastructure for cancer specific infection surveillance.

Associate Professor Worth is an Infectious Diseases physician and clinical epidemiologist internationally recognised for development of frameworks to monitor healthcare-associated infections. Director of Infection Prevention, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, and Advisor to the Victorian Healthcare Associated Infection Surveillance System (VICNISS) Coordinating Centre, he has pioneered fist-in-kind state and national programs responsible for surveillance of healthcare-associated infections, data analysis and reporting to government, hospitals and aged-care sectors.

Early recognition of infection is vital to improve patient outcomes.  In the era of multidisciplinary team management where patients may be followed and individually reviewed and counselled by medical, nursing or pharmacy team members, a sound knowledge of infection risk, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment is required by all team members. Through engaging and training the next generation of clinician researchers we will decrease deaths from infections in the cancer patient population. Increasing awareness and educating clinicians will ultimately result in fewer misdiagnoses and better treatment strategies for this vulnerable patient population, reducing deaths and improving quality of life. The NCIC provides infections in cancer specific training and support to Masters, honours, and PhD students from all backgrounds (science, nursing, pharmacy, and clinician) and have an established clinician, pharmacist, and nurse PhD pathway. Please talk to us about project opportunities.

International Fellow training

We have an established program for national and international visiting infectious disease clinician specialists to train at our centre in the sub-speciality of Immunocompromised host. Trainees are embedded with our clinical teams, attend clinical rounds including in the ICU, transplant and leukemia service, CAR-T cell, medical and surgical oncology.  As well as attending and presenting at our regular clinical and journal club meetings they attend antimicrobial stewardship team meetings and rounds and specific clinics including antibiotic allergy, vaccination, pre-immune suppression assessment, hospital in the home and review post-discharge. Each trainee completes a project and receives supervision from our clinical research team including statistical support.

• Programme lead: Associate Professor Michelle Yong

The NCIC clinical research team are highly experienced multidisciplinary clinical trials team specialising in novel therapeutics in the immune compromised host. The team have conducted and successfully led over one hundred multi-site studies across Australia including industry and MRFF/NHMRC trials. The team consists of investigators, manager, senior study coordinators, ethics and governance specialists, research nurses, clinical data manager and laboratory research staff.

• Programme Lead: Associate Professor Michelle Yong
• Research Nurse Manager: Rachel Woolstencroft

The NCIC has dedicated laboratory space on level 12 PMCC. The laboratory team consists of Senior RA Surekha Tennakoon and two junior lab staff. Lab capabilities include processing and storing specimens (including PBMC, plasma and serum, fecal specimens and broncheolar lavage (BAL)), ELISA, PCR and flow.

• Programme lead: Surekha Tennakoon

As Australia’s only dedicated cancer centre, our programs are in high demand and have an international reputation for excellent training. Our clinical meetings attract participants from Singapore General Hospital, Auckland Hospital and other Australian centres for the opportunity to present and discuss infection in the immunocompromised host.

Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to be added to the clinical meeting email list.

We have established the first APHRA accredited Australian Antimicrobial Stewardship in cancer Nurse Practitioner (NP) role. The AMS nurse practitioner provides in hospital education on AMS, Sepsis, Antibiotic allergy, low risk home based-care, policy, auditing and reporting.

• Nurse led education programme lead: Belinda Lambros

Enhancing Infection Surveillance to Transform Excellence In National cancer care.

Led by Associate Professor Leon Worth, this project aims to utilize artificial intelligence through a digital platform named EINSTEIN to identify serious and emerging infections in cancer patients with compromised immune systems.

The project involves collaboration with the University of Queensland, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, BioGrid Australia Limited, Melbourne Health, and Royal Melbourne Hospital.The goal is to develop a scalable system for infection surveillance, incorporating digital algorithms into clinical workflows for improved clinical decision-making.

• Project lead: Associate Professor Leon Worth, Prof Karin Thursky

The CSMART RCT was an adaptive and rapid implementation trial of novel therapies to prevent and treat COVID-19 infection in high risk cancer patients. Run between 2021-2023 CSMART enrolled over 600 patients into a one month long trial of a 3 x daily nasal spray of Interferon-a to prevent COVID and other respiratory viral infections, while this spray has been trialled before for this purpose, this is a world first double blinded RCT of the drug, which is showing promising results as a prophylaxis in addition to COVID vaccine.

• Project lead: Associate Professor Michelle Yong

Allergies that we thought we had in childhood may no longer exist, they can come and go. Our doctors at the Centre for Antibiotic Allergy and Research run allergy clinics at Austin Health and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. The Antibiotic Allergy Service can determine current allergies, which can help your treating team make the best decisions about which antibiotics to give. This service can occur in a variety of settings including ambulatory clinics, inpatient programs and clinical trials.

• Project lead: Dr Morgan Rose

The PIPPIN project is a multicentre, randomised clinical trial to assess the impact of positron emission tomography combined with computed tomography (PET/CT) on the management and outcomes of persistent neutropenic fever in cancer patients.

Due to a lack of localising symptoms and signs, and deficiencies with current diagnostic’s the cause of neutropenic fever in patients with acute leukaemia and haematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients is frequently unknown. The risk for deterioration in these patients, while waiting to determine cause of fever, is significant, with concerns for uncontrolled bacterial sepsis and invasive fungal infection.

The PIPPIN project demonstrated FDG-PET/CT to be superior to CT alone in leading to reduced broad-spectrum antimicrobial use, with implications of reduced induction of antimicrobial resistance (a global threat) and other adverse effects from prolonged antimicrobials, including organ toxicities, antibiotic-associated infections and microbiome derangement.

This project will impact care of patients nationally and internationally, by transforming the diagnostic algorithm in persistent neutropenic fever with likely benefits of reducing costs of care and the risk of complications related to prolonged length of stay for cancer patients experiencing neutropenic fever.

• Project lead: Dr Abby Douglas