The Cancer and Aetiology and Prevention Laboratory focuses primarily on understanding the health benefits of vitamin D supplementation, balancing the risks and benefits of sun exposure and reducing the impact of pancreatic cancer.
CURRENT RESEARCH
- Professor Neale leads the NHMRC-funded D-Health Trial involving over 21,000 older Australians. The D-Health Trial aims to understand the impact of vitamin D supplementation on mortality rate, cancer incidence, cardiovascular disease, and many other health outcomes such as falls, fractures, respiratory tract infection, mood and memory. The participants finished taking their supplements in February 2020, and the team is now focussed on analysing data and preparing results for presentation
- working to understand clinician and public understanding of how to balance the risks and benefits of sun exposure, and to model the optimal amount of sun exposure, in order to inform policy decisions
- funded by the Medical Research Future Fund, our group is leading a randomised controlled trial of a counselling service for people and families caring for somebody with pancreatic cancer
- using a national linked dataset to identify subgroups of the population who are at high risk of pancreatic cancer, and among whom screening may be warranted
- funded by Mylan, we are leading a clinician working group to develop a checklist that will support early diagnosis of pancreatic diseases
Staff
- Dr Bridie Thompson, Research Officer
- Dr Mary Waterhouse, Research Officer
- Catherine Baxter, Project Manager
- Briony Duarte Romero, Research Assistant
- Sabbir Rahman, Student
- Hai Pham, Student
- Sitwat Ali, Student
- Tessa Dingle, Student
Internal Collaborators
- Professor David Whiteman
- Professor Penny Webb
- Dr Susan Jordan
- Dr Vanessa Beesley
External Collaborators
- Pancreatic Case Control Consortium Collaborators, across Europe and USA
- Professor Susan Evans & Professor John Zalcberg, Monash University
- Professor Jon Golledge, James Cook University
- Robyn Lucas, Australian National University
- Associate Professor David Wyld, Dr Matthew Burge & Dr Melissa Eastgate, Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital
D-Health Collaborators
- Dallas English, University of Melbourne
- Bruce Armstrong, University of Sydney
- Alison Venn, University of Tasmania
- Peter Ebeling, Monash University
- Rachel O’Connell, University of Sydney
- Jolieke van der Pols, Queensland University of Technology
We gratefully acknowledge support from:
- National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC)