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Two Marshall Centre researchers, Dr Alfred Tay and Prof Samuel Lundin showcased their research at the Science on the Swan medical research conference this week. The theme of the conference this year was “Cutting Edge". The pair exemplified this topic with their research associated with the personalised medicine approach.

Dr Tay presented research demonstrating that personalised treatment is the best strategy to combat antibiotic resistant Helicobacter pylori.  Infection with this bacterium is associated with peptic ulcer disease, and gastric cancer, which causes 1,100 deaths in Australia each year.   However, the standard therapy for eradication is failing worldwide due to growing antibiotic resistance. Prof Barry Marshall, Dr Tay and their team have had great success employing a personalised treatment strategy and have also developed new drug combinations especially effective against multi-drug resistant strains affecting the WA community.

Prof Lundin presented research on precision immunomics and described work to diagnose cancer at an early stage, which can be vital to successful treatment. He showed that high-density peptide array technology is well-suited to perform large scale B-cell epitope mapping of sera from infected individuals. His study was focused on how different patterns of Helicobacter pylori B-cell epitopes relate to development of gastric cancer. This methodology should pave the way for precision diagnosis and monitoring of a range of infections and infection-induced cancer.

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For more information, contact Josephine Muir