A West Australian First

30 Oct 2017

In a first for Western Australia, generous donations to the St John of God Foundation and the Tonkinson Fund has enabled researchers at St John of God Subiaco Hospital's Bendat Family Comprehensive Cancer Centre to purchase new technology to better analyse tumours.

St John of God Subiaco Hospital’s Research Fellow Dr Melanie McCoy said having access to the TissueGnostics Workstation would allow current and future researchers to complete thorough analysis of such samples requires a sophisticated image analysis system.

“The system is the first of its kind in Western Australia, and will enable comprehensive analysis of tumour tissue (image pictured) on a level not previously possible using technology available in Perth,” Dr McCoy said.

The technology is currently used by the hospital's Cancer Research Group, with patients undergoing colorectal or gynaecological surgery for suspected malignancy invited to give their consent for tissue samples surplus to diagnostic requirements for use in ethically approved research studies.

Dr McCoy said more than 2,500 patients had so far given their consent for these samples to be used in research.

"This represents an incredibly valuable resource for in-house and collaborative research studies," she said.

"The workstation helps to place St John of God Health Care at the forefront of research and allow us to drive better health outcomes for the community."

St John of God Foundation raising money to support and give back to the communities St John of God Health Care serves, through supporting research, social outreach and health care developments.

This Christmas, you can help our multidisciplinary teams discover lifesaving treatments by donating towards innovative new equipment that aid research.

Image: image of immune cells in colon cancer tissue: captured using fluorescent slide scanner funded by Bright Blue – The Police Commissioner’s Fund for Sick Kids for the Telethon Kids Institute Western Australia.