New Horizons Medical

Jacquie and David discuss what happens when healing causes harm.

Together they discuss the behaviour of platelets, how they interact with the immune system and how their role in healing can contribute to ongoing damage.

They explore how changing the signals that guide platelet behaviour could help restore their protective role and open new paths to treatment.

The mutations that drive childhood cancers are different from those driving adult cancers, yet children still rely heavily on drugs and treatments repurposed from adult treatments. These can cause lasting health problems, including secondary cancers, affecting both their quality and length of life.

Antoine De Weck explains the scientific and commercial barriers behind this treatment gap, and how the THINK initiative at Children's Cancer Institute is working to develop more targeted treatments specifically for children.

Brian tells the story of his wife Suzanne's journey with a rare form of lung cancer. He shares the roller coaster of events, and how they coped together during the seven months from her diagnosis until her death.

It is an inspirational story as Suzanne was a women of exceptional strength and courage in all aspects of her life. Those qualities, along with her humour and determination, helped them hold on to what mattered through even the most difficult days.

Celebrating her life and finding his way through loss, Brian shares a legacy of courage that offers inspiration to others facing illness or the loss of someone they love.

During her 15-year journey with MS, the qualification Belinda undertook to help others has also helped her.

Before developing MS, Belinda studied psychological science and sociology, majoring in disability. She chose this field after seeing the challenges faced by people with disabilities and wanted to understand how she could make their lives easier.

The methods and coping skills she learned to support others have helped her maintain a lifestyle that enables her to work and enjoy time with family and friends.

In a search and rescue job where people's lives depended on him, Dene talks about the coping strategies he developed after experiencing a stroke and, later, a heart attack. He explains how cognitive recovery differs from physical recovery, and how he continues to look to the future and the work and activities he loves.

Cam talks about bringing greater precision to the treatment of depression.

When what you are experiencing cannot be seen or easily described, finding an effective treatment may involve month or sometimes years, of trial and error. This can be deeply discouraging and leave patients wondering whether anything will work.

 Cam explains how technology can monitor patterns of electrical activity in the brain much like the readouts used to monitor the heart. It does not deliver electrical treatment it measures brain activity helping to validate what a person is experiencing, guide treatment decisions and shorten the path towards finding something that works.

Crohn’s disease is a lifelong and painful condition that causes inflammation in the digestive tract.

Rhys talks about the adjustments he has made in his life and career. While he certainly cannot ignore the disease, he chooses not to give it more energy or attention than necessary by focusing on its difficulties and inconveniences.

When illness changes the life you knew.

Robbie talks about how adapting to what remains can uncover a different kind of fulfilment.

Trust your medical team, they want you to live.

When difficult turns dangerous, and fear becomes part of the journey, Sheryl shows how trust can be as important as courage.

Jacquie tells the story of how she discovered that platelets, which are responsible for blood coagulation, can play a significant role in autoimmune diseases.

When she was researching multiple sclerosis, she noticed platelets crossing from the blood stream into brain tissue.

There are around 80 autoimmune diseases the five most well known are rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis and coeliac disease. To give you a sense of the enormity of the problem, these five alone affect an estimated 145 million people worldwide.

Debilitating and degenerative, there are currently no cures.

However, this discovery can open the opportunity to develop new drugs for not only multiple sclerosis but many other auto immune diseases.