Dear all,
October seemed to fly by! This month, we hosted the NCIC Symposium and Workshop – “Pathways to better infection care in cancer”.
I would like to take an opportunity to thank our guest speakers, Prof Melissa Baysari from University of Sydney, Dr Ashley Ng from Department of Health Services Research PMCC, and Dr Lisa Guccione from Department of Health Services of Research and Implementation Science PMCC, for sharing their valuable insights. And many thanks to the NCIC team for collaborating so seamless over the past few weeks to make this workshop a success!
Dr Dan Yeoh PhD Completion Seminar
On another positive note, I would like to congratulate Dr Dan Yeoh on completing his PhD in Invasive fungal Disease in children with cancer: Improving diagnosis, optimising antifungal prescribing, and exploring prospective surveillance.
Farewell Dr Galadriel Pellejero from Spain
Last week marked the end of Dr Galadriel Pellejero visiting fellowship with NCIC. During her fellowship, Galadriel attended clinical ward rounds at PMCC and RMH as well as outpatients and ICU. She gave a talk about AMS practices including development of an app to the NCAS group and was involved with project work and a project proposal with definitions around BK viremia and disease in the allo-HSCT population. We hope to continue the collaboration including catch-up in Barcelona at ECCMID 2024.
Other upcoming events
ANZMIG Mycology Masterclass 2023
2nd - 4th November 2023
‘Preventing and treating fungal infections, one course at a time’
NCIC Presenters:
Prof Monica Slavin ‘‘Treatment trials, and unmet needs’ and chairing the session Non-Aspergillus Mould Infections”
Dr Abby Douglas “Antifungal Stewardship”
A/Prof Ben Teh “Prevention of Aspergillosis”
Dr Michelle Yong “Fungal-respiratory Virus Co-infections”
Antibiotics Awareness Week 2023 (AAWS)
led by Prof Karin Thursky
Thursday 23rd November 2023
4pm to 7pm
Level 7, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre
NCIC Presenters:
A/Prof Gabrielle Haeusler, Prof Jason Trubiano, Dr Olivia Smibert
National Antimicrobial Prescribing Survey (NAPS)
led by Prof Karin Thursky
A hybrid event celebrating the many successes of the National Antimicrobial Prescribing Survey (NAPS) as the program turns TEN in 2023.
Friday 24th November 2023
2pm to 5pm
Charles LaTrobe Theatre, Royal Melbourne Hospital
Learning Health System (LHS) Academy Symposium
Come along to the LHS Academy Symposium to hear of the latest LHS projects led by our 2023 Academy Fellows.
Our very own Belinda Lambros will be presenting in a panel discussion.
Wednesday 29th November 2023
3:30pm to 7:00pm
Forum 1 & 2, Melbourne Connect, 700 Swanson Street (hybrid event)
PhD Spotlight
Dr Victoria Hall
Infectious Diseases Physician,
PhD Candidate, NCIC
Victoria is an Infectious Diseases physician and second year PhD student at the NCIC, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre (PMCC). She completed her Infectious Diseases training in Melbourne at the Austin and Alfred Hospitals in 2020.
To further her clinical and research experience, she undertook a Transplant and Oncology Infectious Diseases Fellowship at the University Health Network, through University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, from mid 2020 – end of 2021. During the COVID-19 pandemic, supervised by leaders in the field including Professors Deepali Kumar and Atul Humar, she led work studying COVID-19 infection and vaccine immune response in solid organ transplant recipients. This included a practice changing randomised control trial of a third dose of COVID-19 vaccine, leading to FDA and then international approval for all immunocompromised patients.
This has inspired her current NHMRC-supported translational PhD, examining burden and host immune response of respiratory virus infection in patients with haematological malignancy, supervised by Professor Monica Slavin, A/Prof Benjamin Teh, Dr Michelle Yong and Professor Katherine Kedzierska. As part of her PhD, she has been successful in securing research support funding as a co-investigator from a PMCC Foundation grant, professional development support from the Rosie Lew PMCC Foundation Postgraduate award and as principal investigator from the Government of Victoria, Victorian COVID-19 Vaccinees Collection (VC2) COVID-19 Research seed funding. In addition, she was recognised by the Transplant Infectious Diseases (TID) journal as an inaugural recipient of the Dr Francisco Marty TID Journal Editorial Fellowship for 2023. She has presented her work in oral abstract form at ECCMID 2023, American Transplant Congress 2022 and successfully published seven first author publications in internationally recognised, peer reviewed Infectious Diseases and Haematology journals.
She looks forward to her upcoming third year of PhD, with further research work expected including assessment of influenza vaccination strategies and current epidemiology of respiratory viruses in patients with haematological malignancy.
Feature Paper
Invasive Aspergillosis in adult patients in Australia and New Zealand: 2017–2020
Tio SY, Chen SC, Hamilton K, Heath CH, Pradhan A, Morris AJ, Korman TM, Morrissey O, Halliday CL, Kidd S, Spelman T, Brell N, McMullan B, Clark JE, Mitsakos K, Hardiman RP, Williams P, Campbell AJ, Beardsley J, Van Hal S, Yong MK, Worth LJ, Slavin MA.
“This is one of the largest, multicenter in-depth clinical-epidemiologic evaluation of adult invasive aspergillosis (IA) cases in the Southern Hemisphere, with 221 proven and probable IA cases from ten healthcare institutions in Australia and New Zealand. Salient findings as follows: a) 12% of patints who developed IA were with mild or no immunosuppression; b) neutropenia was less common in this cohort and itself was not associated with mortality; c) with 6.5% azole-resistance rate amongst 46 tested A. fumigatus isolates. Therefore it is important to be aware of IA in patients without traditional host factors, and to perform accurate identification of Aspergillus species with susceptibility testing to guide management.” - Dr Shio Yen Tio
“Congratulations Shio Yen on completing this large multi-centre study! With data from 10 hospitals to co-ordinate and clean it was a big task but an important part of your PhD. Thanks also go to Prof Sharon Chen, Kate Hamilton for helping oversee the study and ANZMIG for support.” - Prof Monica Slavin
Recent publications
High Rates of Seroprotection and Seroconversion to Vaccine-Preventable Infections in the Early Post-Autologous Stem Cell Transplant Period. Hall et al
CMV prevention strategies in allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation; the role of prophylaxis and pre-emptive monitoring in the era of letermovir. Yong et al
A protocol for an international, multicentre pharmacokinetic study for Screening Antifungal Exposure in Intensive Care Units: The SAFE-ICU study. Roberts et al
Kind regards
Prof Monica Slavin, MBBS, MD, FRACP, FAAHMS
Head, Department Infectious Disease, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre
Professor of Infection in Cancer and Transplantation, University of Melbourne Department of Infectious Diseases and the Sir Peter MacCallum Department of Oncology
Director, National Centre for Infections in Cancer and Transplantation