ASPIRE award to support blood cancer research

Associate Professor Ross Dickins is one of the first two
Australian recipients of The Mark Foundation's ASPIRE award.

Monash University’s Associate Professor Ross Dickins has been awarded a USD $232,000 (approximately $325,000 AUD) ASPIRE Award to support his research into preventing relapse following acute myeloid leukemia (AML) therapy from US-based philanthropic organisation The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research.

Starving cancer cells to death

Stem cell biology research group with various co-authors on the study
L-R: Ms Jacqueline Boyle, Professor David Curtis, Ms Shokoufeh
Abdollahi, Mr Feng Yan, Dr Cedric Tremblay, Mr Andrej Terzic,
Ms Jesslyn Saw, Dr Christina Makhlouf. See explainer video 1:15 min

One of the major issues with patients fighting leukemia or cancer in general is relapse, although chemotherapy helps to get rid of most cancer cells. But these cells come back.

Dr Cedric Tremblay in the Australian Centre for Blood Diseases at Monash University is first author on a recently published Nature Communications study on a novel approach to weakening, then killing, cancer cells. 

Inducing blood cancer cell death with a new therapy

Associate Professor Ross Dickins

by Anne Crawford

In patients with the blood cancer, acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), immature white blood cells in the bone marrow and blood become locked into a state of perpetual proliferation.

Most AML patients are treated with chemotherapy, which induces leukaemia cell death. However, some patients can also be treated with differentiation therapy, which instead triggers the maturation of leukaemia cells and stops their proliferation. Several new differentiation therapies have been clinically approved for AML patients, but their mechanisms of action are poorly understood.

Associate Professor Ross Dickins’ laboratory has been focussing on understanding the behaviour of AML cells exposed to differentiation therapy. 

Australia’s first dedicated Blood Cancer Therapeutics Centre launched

The ACRF Blood Cancer Therapeutics Centre launch ceremony
held at the Alfred Medical Research and Education Precinct. 
L-R: Russell Caplan (ACRF), A/Prof Andrew Wei, Prof Andrew
Spencer and Greg Camm (ACRF)

The Alfred and Monash University have established a dedicated centre for Blood Cancer Therapeutics Research, thanks to a $1.2 million grant from the Australian Cancer Research Foundation (ACRF). The grant was awarded to a team of haematologists led by Associate Professor Andrew Wei, and Professors Andrew Spencer, David Curtis and Stephen Jane, and the centre was officially launched on Tuesday 24 July 2018.  

Professor Harshal Nandurkar becomes new Director of the Australian Centre for Blood Diseases

Professor Harshal Nandurkar has been appointed as Director of the Australian Centre for Blood Diseases (ACBD), its first after the inaugural Director, Professor Hatem Salem AM, retired at the end of 2012. He has also been appointed as Director of the Alfred Health's Haematology department.

Prof Nandurkar  is a clinician-researcher trained at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and Department of Biochemistry, Monash University. Up to now, he has been based at the University of Melbourne for his research and St Vincents for clinical practice. His clinical interests cover all areas of haematology including blood malignancies, bleeding and clotting disorders. He provides inpatient care at Alfred Health and Monash Medical Centre, Clayton.

Prof Nandurkar will be supervising a basic science research program in the areas of thrombosis and genetics of blood cancer at the ACBD.

See: http://www.acbd.monash.org/research/vascularbiologygroup.html

Multiple Myeloma blood cancer registry

A multiple myeloma blood cancer registry, the first of its kind in Australia and New Zealand, is being piloted through the Alfred in conjunction with Monash University. Professor Andrew Spencer, Head of the ACBD Myeloma research group investigating malignant haematology and and stem cell transplantation, said that the registry was developed after a realisation that there were no correct data on myeloma in Australia,