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Peter Mac and the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre (VCCC) Alliance have jointly received a top honour in the prestigious Melbourne Achiever Awards.
These Awards, run by the Committee for Melbourne, celebrate contributions to Melbourne that will leave a lasting legacy.
Committee for Melbourne Interim CEO Matt Gaffney said Peter Mac and VCCC Alliance were global leaders in cancer research and had made outstanding contributions to health and research.
“The 2022 Melbourne Achiever Award for Peter Mac is as Australia’s only public hospital solely dedicated to cancer, and as the home of Australia’s largest cancer research group," Mr Gaffney said.
"The VCCC Alliance is a powerful partnership of 10 leading research, academic and clinical institutions - comprising many Committee for Melbourne members including Peter Mac, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Health, and the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research - working together to fundamentally reshape how we tackle cancer.
"The collaborative work they do leading the way for the biomedical precinct will leave a lasting legacy on Melbourne and the world.”
The awards were presented at a gala function on Wednesday night in the presence of Her Excellency the Honourable Linda Dessau AC, Governor of Victoria who is also Patron of Peter Mac.
“On behalf of everyone at Peter Mac, I am honoured and delighted to receive this Award in partnership with the VCCC Alliance,” said Peter Mac’s chief executive Professor Shelley Dolan.
“It reflects our shared duty to positively impact the lives of every Victorian with cancer and to ensure Melbourne continues to play a leading role in global cancer research and the search for new treatments and cures.”
VCCC Alliance executive director Professor Grant McArthur said there was a vision to create in Melbourne a “hub for world class, integrated cancer research, education and clinical care that would save lives of Victorians affected by cancer. I believe the reality has far exceeded this.”
“Many people have contributed to this success, but at the heart is Melbourne’s exceptional foundations in biomedical research and medical care, so this is truly an award shared by the collective,” Prof McArthur said.
The late Michael Gudinski AM was also awarded the Melbourne Achiever Award for an outstanding individual, as a powerful and influential figure in the Australian music industry.
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New software developed by Peter Mac and collaborators is helping patients diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) to determine what subtype they have.
ALL is the most common childhood cancer in the world, and also affects adults.
"Thirty to forty per cent of all childhood cancers are ALL, it's a major paediatric cancer problem," says Associate Professor Paul Ekert from Peter Mac and the Children’s Cancer Institute, who was involved in this work.
Over 300 people are diagnosed with the disease in Australia each year, and over half of those are young children under the age of 15.
Determining what subtype of ALL a patient has provides valuable information about their prognosis, and how they should best be treated.
"Figuring out what genetic changes are driving a patient's cancer is key to working out how intense their treatment should be and what drugs get used," Associate Professor Ekert says.
But up until the advent of genomic technologies like RNA sequencing, methods for doing so were not as precise.
"Previously, genetic abnormalities were detected by looking down a microscope at individual chromosomes and looking for four or five main defects," Associate Professor Ekert says.
"But we now know there are at least 23 subtypes for ALL."
In a paper published in Blood Advances late last month, Peter Mac researchers and co-authors from the University of Melbourne, the Murdoch Children's Research Institute and the Children’s Cancer Institute describe the ALLSorts, software that uses RNA sequencing data to identify a patient's ALL subtype.
"ALLSorts adds a different way of finding these genetic drivers, and classifying what subtype of ALL a patient has," says Peter Mac's Professor Alicia Oshlack, the senior author on the paper.
"And it can be used with even a single patient sample, so testing centres regardless of their size will be able to use it."
To the best of the researchers' knowledge, ALLSorts is also the first publicly available and open source tool of its kind.
"We used a machine learning approach, and validated the accuracy of our software on children's cancer samples from the Royal Children's Hospital and adult cancer samples from Peter Mac," Professor Oshlack says.
In machine learning, it is the computer that puts all the information from a large dataset together to use the most informative features of the dataset, rather than relying on the human researchers to determine what the important pieces of the data are.
"Hopefully this software can be used across the world in testing ALL and informing treatment choices for patients," Professor Oshlack says.
"And it's also a nice example of the importance of computational biology in cancer research."
Image: Two young girls with acute lymphocytic leukaemia (ALL) receiving chemotherapy. Credit: National Cancer Institute
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Join us for Stand Up for Cancer - a workshop and performance all about putting your cancer experience through a comic lens.
Stand-up comedian Rachel Berger will lead a one-day Stand Up Comedy workshop at Peter Mac for 10 first-time, would-be comedians who have the opportunity to perform their routines to a live audience that very night.
You don't need to look for what's funny, just reveal what's true.
This is not a comedy-writing workshop but a unique opportunity to draw on Rachel’s 30 years of experience to help you understand what makes YOU funny.
The ten spots are open to Peter Mac patients, carers and staff.
Before registering your interest, please ensure you can attend the full day workshop and evening performance.
- Workshop and performance - date and venue to be confirmed after EoI period.
- Places are limited to 10 people, available from 10am on the day until the rehearsal and performance that evening
- Participants must be 18 years + over
- Lunch, dinner and refreshments will be provided
- Closing date for submissions is June 22.
Register your expression of interest here
About Rachel Berger
Rachel is one of Australia’s favourite stand-up comedians and a woman of remarkably diversified talents. In addition to playing the xylophone and carving avocado pips into small Buddhas she’s recently stopped feeling guilty. There are no cows too sacred for this Berger. Rachel has worked variously as a comedian, broadcaster, novelist, columnist, agitator and television entertainer. She’s taken four solo shows to the Edinburgh Festival and her dynamic presence and engagingly sharp observations have made her an extremely popular performer both live and on television, across Australia and overseas.
Rachel creates a safe environment for discussion and the opportunity for participants to work on their routines, to find their own voice, confidence and authentic delivery and to perform in front of a supportive audience later that evening.
“Experience her machine gun delivery and ricocheting thoughts, and you realise she must be as pumped as any AFL footballer.” – Stage Left
For further information about Stand Up for Cancer, please email [email protected] or call (03) 8559 6260
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Australia’s Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and Israel’s Sheba Medical Centre have signed an agreement to foster new international research collaborations and opportunities for staff development.
Peter Mac is Australia’s only public hospital solely dedicated to treating people with cancer and Sheba Medical Centre is the largest hospital and cancer centre in Israel and the Middle East.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has been formally signed by representatives of Peter Mac, Sheba Medical Centre and the Australian Friends of Sheba Medical Centre.
Peter Mac Chief Executive Professor Shelley Dolan welcomed the MOU as an important step in building Peter Mac’s network of international partnerships and strategic agreements.
“Engaging with leading hospitals and scientific institutes globally delivers new development opportunities for Peter Mac’s staff, grows our program of cutting-edge research and supports our mission to provide world’s best cancer care to Australians,” Professor Dolan said.
“We are delighted to be working with an organisation of the stature of Sheba Medical Centre and look forward to the new collaborations and opportunities this MOU makes possible.”
Professor Arnon Afek, Deputy Director General of Sheba Medical Centre, said: "We believe that the future of medicine is dependent on collaboration, so we are thrilled to work with Peter Mac in trying to find innovative ways to combat cancer”.
“We believe that this is a win-win for both medical facilities that will most certainly benefit people, not just in Israel and Australia, but also around the world," Professor Afek said.
Avri Alfasi, Chairman of the Board of Australian Friends of Sheba Medical Centre, said researchers and clinicians from Australia and Israel have had a long history of friendship and support based on mutual respect and shared values.
“This significant cooperation agreement with the acclaimed Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre is aligned with Australian Friends of Sheba’s vision of promoting global health through collaboration with prime institutions in Australia. We look forward to seeing the fruits of this venture,” Mr Alfasi said.
The MOU provides a framework for Peter Mac and Sheba Medical Centre to work together on:
- Innovation and commercialisation opportunities – Including working towards establishing an innovation hub in Melbourne modelled on Sheba’s successful ARC Innovation Centre
- Research and scientific collaborations – Allowing exchange of scientific and educational information and materials in support of joint research and clinical trials
- Bilateral education and training fellowship program – Establishing a program of clinical fellowships, of six to 18-months duration
- Faculty and researcher exchange – To facilitate visits by clinical staff and researchers for training and education, or to further scientific collaborations
Sheba Medical Centre has been listed as a Top 10 World's Best Hospital for the 4th consecutive year (2019-2022) by Newsweek magazine, while Peter Mac was listed at number 23 in the Best Specialized Hospitals 2022 category.
Contacts:
- Peter Mac Communications team 0417 123 048
- Sheba Medical Centre International Spokesperson Steve Walz on 972 52 233 0430
About Peter Mac
Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre is a world-leading cancer research, education and treatment centre and Australia’s only public health service solely dedicated to caring for people affected by cancer.
About Sheba Medical Centre
The largest and most comprehensive medical centre in Israel and the Middle East, Sheba Medical Centre is generating global impact through its medical care, research and healthcare transformation.
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“This retreat was so much more than fishing; this was a life-changing experience.”
This participant’s quotation sums up the experiences of the 10 men from the Peter Mac Men’s Shed who attended Reel Recovery Australia’s retreat held at Marysville between 4th and 6th May 2022.
The program was run by Mending Casts Inc, a not-for-profit organisation run solely by volunteers devoted to helping people during their cancer journey by introducing them to the health and well-being benefits of fly fishing.
The three-day Marysville retreat was the first to be sponsored by the Peter Mac Men’s Shed where all meals, lodgings and fly-fishing equipment were provided at no cost to the patients.
The program commenced with the “Vesting Ceremony” where participants were introduced to fishing “buddies” who would accompany them through the 3-day program.
The buddies dressed the men in fishing vests which had been signed by others who had been through the program before them. This creates a strong bond between them and a symbolic connection between past, present and future participants.
After dinner, the men engaged in fly tying where they were shown how to tie a “wet” and a “dry” fly. These would then be used in the following days of fishing.
Day two kicked off with fly casting lessons run by qualified instructors. Under this experienced tutelage, the men were quickly casting with a proficiency that would enable them to catch fish.
Come midday, everyone was off to the Goulburn River to test these newly learned skills. Several trout were caught and safely released, whilst the men stood with their buddies in the afternoon sunlight and shared in the beauty of their environment. On dusk, a Courageous Conversation was held riverside where the men shared their cancer journeys with each other while circled around a campfire. It was a magical evening on so many levels.
The third day started with a fishing session at a private lake near Buxton. It wasn’t long before the men were hooking up left, right and centre with everyone catching their first fish on a fly rod, plus many more thereafter.
The laughter and sheer joy on their faces was so gratifying and they now understood the respite that fly fishing can provide from their everyday troubles. The retreat concluded with the emotional “Closing the Circle” ceremony where participants, buddies and volunteers shared tears of hope, love and gratitude. It is a powerful and uplifting affirmation of the benefits this program brings to all who experience it.
In fly fishing as in life, with every cast there is hope…Be Well Fish On!
John Billing
President - Mending Casts Inc &
Reel Recovery Australia Retreat Co-ordinator