From little things, bigger things grow: ACBD CARE program expands to CCS

The Central Clinical School's CARE schematic

The concept of research and consumer partnerships is not a new one, but the scientific community has increasingly recognised its importance in recent years, with a growing proportion of funding bodies now recommending or requiring consumer engagement for grant pitches. 

The Central Clinical School's Consumer and Researcher Engagement (CCS CARE) program initially developed by researchers and staff within Australian Centre for Blood Diseases (ACBD), is now seeing a growth and roll out at the school-wide level. This growth is remarkable given that the CARE program was only officially launched in February of this year (ccsmonash.blogspot.com/2021/03/launch-of-acbds-community-engagement.html).

Video: Blood not bone marrow? The potential role for blood testing to improve Multiple Myeloma diagnosis and therapy

 

Prof Andrew Spencer, Dr Durga Mithraprabhu &
Dr Nick Bingham explain the research for liquid biopsy
 vs bone marrow test for multiple myeloma.
See video 1:30:12 hours

The CCS Consumer Engagement committee hosted our first community webinar on 7 October - "Blood not bone marrow? The potential role for blood testing to improve Multiple Myeloma diagnosis and therapy". See webinar video.

Presentations were given by members of the Spencer lab in the Australian Centre for Blood Diseases, as well as their consumer partner Mr Henry Blatman and a representative of Myeloma Australia, Ms Hayley Beer.

Giving prominence to the patient perspective: Launch of the CARE webinar series

Register for the inaugural CARE seminar on 7 October featuring
Dr Durga Mithraprabhu, Dr Nick Bingham, Prof Andrew Spencer
(pictured L-R here), Dr Tiffany Khong and a patient advocate,
Mr Henry Blatman from the Spencer group.

by Drs Catherine Carmichael and Karen Alt

There is an increasing awareness within the health and medical research community that including the patient perspective in research design and implementation greatly enhances the significance, relevance and quality of research outcomes.  Patients, family members and carers (collectively termed “consumers”) bring their valuable lived experience to research teams and contribute to a shared goal of turning new discoveries into better patient outcomes.

Launch of ACBD’s Community Engagement Program

PhD Student, Ms Charlene Lam and consumer partner Ken Young. 
See his story, "Sequencing MPNs could change my life" 

On behalf of the Community and Researcher Engagement (CARE) Committee at the Australian Centre for Blood Diseases (ACBD), we are proud to announce the launch of our Community Engagement program. 

This program aims to connect dedicated researchers at the ACBD with community members (often called consumers) who have experienced a blood disorder or cancer. Consumers will be partnered with researchers or a research group, bringing their valuable lived experiences to the team and contributing to our shared goal of turning new discoveries into better patient outcomes. 

Grant a boon to rare leukaemia research

Dr Catherine Carmichael

by Anne Crawford

Acute Erythroleukaemia (AEL) is an aggressive subtype of Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML) with extremely poor outcomes; patients have a less than 20% chance of surviving past five years. AEL is largely resistant to standard treatments and new therapies are desperately needed.

Currently, there is a very limited understanding of the mechanisms that underpin AEL development, and subsequently, scientists and clinicians have made very few inroads into understanding how to best treat this malignancy.

Dr Catherine Carmichael, a group leader at the Australian Centre for Blood Diseases (ACBD), has been awarded $1.38 million by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) towards a five-year project investigating novel therapeutic strategies for AEL.

Dr Catherine Carmichael joins ACBD

Dr Catherine Carmichael

Welcome to Dr Catherine Carmichael from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI), whose expertise is on the regulation of both normal and abnormal blood cell development especially in relation to leukaemia. Dr Carmichael received her PhD from the University of Melbourne in 2008, studying genetic predispositions to haematological malignancies. She was a postdoc for 6 years at WEHI studying the role of the ETS-related gene, ERG, during leukaemia development. She has now joined the Australian Centre for Blood Diseases Mammalian Functional Genetics lab of A/Prof Jody Haigh as a Research Fellow, and is studying the role of Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT) modulators during both normal blood cell production ("haematopoiesis") and leukaemia development. See more at www.acbd.monash.org/research/mammal-genetics.html