Catalysis

Professor Paul Timpson speaks with Divya on pancreas cancer research, his relationship with mentors and mentees and how to deal with career rejection

In this episode, Professor Alex Broom shares his research insights into the social, political and economic aspects of cancer care, primarily investigating the inequities within our health system and the flow on effect this has for the individual and society.

Professor Broom is a Professor of Sociology at the School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of Sydney. He is recognised as an international leader in sociology, with a specific interest in health. This has included a focus on the social, cultural and political dimensions of cancer and palliative care, and more recently, infectious diseases. His work takes a person-centred approach, qualitatively exploring the complex intersections of individual experience and social, cultural and political context.

Dr Alison Young is the current T2T3 Research Fellow at Sydney Catalyst and is working on implementing a smoking cessation pathway in several hospital sites across Sydney and regional NSW.

In the lead up to their online workshop - Integrating qualitative methods into clinical research - Haryana Dhillon, Jo Shaw and Rebekah Laidsaar-Powell discussed qualitative research methods; what it is, how to use it and examples of where it has transformed research projects.

You can join the workshop on Friday 22 May 2020 at 11am. Further information is available at https://www.sydneycatalyst.org.au/events/syd-cat-upcoming-events/workshop-building-qualitative-studies-into-cancer-research.aspx

Anton Enus has been a news broadcaster for three and a half decades. He has worked as a news reporter, producer and presenter on two continents. He has been on assignment to numerous African states, including Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since 1999 he has anchored SBS World News and has occasionally been a guest presenter on SBS Insight. His bucket list includes finishing that fiction manuscript that has for years been gathering dust in a drawer.

Professor Harris is a practicing orthopaedic surgeon and academic. His clinical interests are in trauma surgery. His research interests broadly cover the topic of surgical effectiveness and clinical research. He conducts randomised trials, systematic reviews, cohort studies and methodological studies.

Current evidence for surgery is poor, incomplete and largely observational and there is a discrepancy between drug and surgery standards in practice. The implications for the lack of surgical evidence are widespread, and multifaceted approaches from key stakeholders, such as surgeons, policy makers and consumers are required to change practice.

Monitoring of patients’ physical symptoms and psychological problems during and after cancer treatment is essential in modern oncology practice. Patient Reported Outcome (PRO) measures (including Quality of Life questionnaires)provide the tools to include patient voices in drug development, evaluation of new treatments and increasingly to support individual patient care through online symptom monitoring. The potential for using PROs as a quality of care measure has also been recognised but not yet widely tested. Examples of PROs as a quality of care measure in practice, such as the NIHR eRAPID program and eRAPID (Electronic patient self-Reporting of Adverse-events: Patient Information and aDvice, provide an opportunity to share experiences and lessons learned for the implementation of PROs. Furthermore, the NHS England Quality of Life Metric project is a response to the Independent Cancer Taskforce’s recommendations to introduce and implement Quality of Life (QoL) data collection for cancer survivors in England. The

information can be used to make changes in care that focus on improving outcomes for patients. An approach to collecting QoL data was developed through an initial research report (Phase 1) and engagement with stakeholders (Phase 2; 2016-17). A pilot project (Phase 3; 2018-19) then tested a devolved approach to collecting

patient-reported QoL outcomes at the end of breast, prostate or colorectal cancer treatment across five pilot Cancer

Alliances (8 different hospitals). The lessons learned led to a Phase 4 pilot of a modified approach of centralised

QoL data collection. Motion plans are also being set up for a nationwide data collection launch in June 2020.

Professor Tempero is Director, UCSF Pancreas Center and Leader of the UCSF Pancreas Cancer Program. She oversees a full portfolio of projects from risk assessment to early detection, biology, and therapeutics in pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Her personal research career has focused on pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, especially in the area of investigational therapeutics. She was a pioneer in the use of antibody-based therapies and helped develop the fixed dose rate concept for gemcitabine. Her group has developed effective gemcitabine combinations and provided a foundation for using CA19-9 as a surrogate for survival in clinical trials, and currently is assessing molecular subtypes and molecular enrichment for selecting new drugs for clinical evaluation.

Veronica is the Director of Strategic Research Investment at the Cancer Institute NSW. She has over 20 years' experience in the strategic development, implementation, delivery and monitoring of medical research and health related projects. After completing a PhD at Imperial College London, Veronica worked as a post doc at Kings College London before transitioning to a career in research administration. She worked as a Grants Manager at the Wellcome Trust and then as Director of Grants at Barts Charity before moving to Australia. Prior to joining the Cancer Institute NSW she was a principal policy officer in the Health and Medical Research Unit at Queensland Health.

Recorded at the Garvan Institute for Medical Research on 19 September 2019 as part of the Sydney Catalyst International Translational Cancer Research Symposium.

Professor Georgina Long, BSc PhD MBBS FRACP, is Co-Director of Melanoma Institute Australia (MIA), and Chair of Melanoma Medical Oncology and Translational Research at MIA and Royal North Shore Hospital, The University of Sydney. She leads an extensive clinical trials team and laboratory at MIA, with a focus on targeted therapies and immuno-oncology in melanoma. She is principal investigator on phase I, II and III clinical trials in adjuvant and metastatic melanoma, including trials in patients with active brain metastases. She is the chief investigator on NHMRC funded research into the molecular biology of melanoma, with a particular interest in clinical and tissue biomarker correlates of systemic therapy sensitivity and resistance. In recognition of her ground breaking research, Professor Long has received a number of awards, including the prestigious Sir Zelman Cowen Universities Fund Prize for Discovery in Medical Research in 2016, and a number of recent CINSW Premiers Awards for Outstanding Cancer Research. In 2018, she was awarded the Outstanding Cancer Researcher of the Year, 2014 she was awarded the Wildfire Award for the most highly-cited, original, peer-reviewed article published in 2011; and in 2013 she was named the Outstanding Cancer Research Fellow. She is the author of over 180 peer-reviewed publications in clinical and translational research in melanoma since 2011, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Lancet Oncology, Journal of Clinical Oncology and Cancer Discovery. Professor Long has presented her work at international conferences and meetings on more than 130 occasions. She is President for the prestigious international Society for Melanoma Research (President from 2018), is member (2015-2017) and Chair (2016) of the ASCO Scientific Committee for Melanoma/Skin cancer, is medical oncology lead for the Australian Melanoma Management Guidelines Committee, is on the editorial boards of several high-impact journals, and is a member of the Melanoma Expert Panel for AJCC Cancer Staging System 8th edition.

Professor Long was awarded the University Medal in Organic Chemistry. She subsequently completed her PhD in Chemistry in the field of anti-cancer agents and their binding to DNA. She then moved to the USA to take up a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship at Scripps Research Institute, exploring nanotechnology in cancer treatment, before returning to Australia to complete her MBBS (Hons). Professor Long became a Fellow of the Australasian College of Physicians in January 2008, specialising in medical oncology.