Research team of the month

Exciting changes are happening in medical oncology across Wollongong and Shoalhaven hospitals. Driven by the Head of the Medical Oncology Department, Dr Lorraine Chantrill, these changes are seeing an increased focus on research with the aim of improving outcomes for cancer patients in the future.

Twenty years ago, Professor Michael Barton left his role as staff specialist at Westmead Hospital to head up a newly formed group: Collaboration for Cancer Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CCORE).

They come dressed in disguise. Looking like one of us, we don’t notice them until it’s too late and they’ve already begun to wage a deadly war.

The Centre for Medical Radiation Physics (CMRP) at the University of Wollongong, headed by Distinguished Professor Anatoly Rozenfeld, are doing really big things: some at an extremely minute scale.

The Targeted Cancer Therapeutics Team at the Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute (IHMRI) aren’t a big team. But the cancers they’re tackling, are. Cancers such as pancreatic cancer and triple negative breast cancer are just two of the cancers currently being investigated via the development and testing of innovative technologies which, they hope, will improve patient survival rates.

There’s a lot of work being conducted at the Medical Physics Unit. Despite this work spanning across seven different research areas, each with its own focus and specialty, the goal is essentially the same: to use clinical research to help improve radiation oncology treatment and consequently improve patient outcomes.

The CONCERT Biobank are a dedicated team committed to providing the best biospecimens for medical research across South West Sydney, Illawarra/Shoalhaven and the ACT.

In July 2011, Professor Afaf Girgis was appointed to develop and lead the Psycho-Oncology Research Group, under the umbrella of the Translational Cancer Research Unit, funded by the Cancer Institute NSW.