A new research centre being developed in Australia will use pioneering ‘spatial biology’ techniques to advance precision diagnosis for several inflammatory diseases.
The Colonial Foundation Diagnostics Centre, backed by AUS$21m in philanthropic investment, aims to influence more personalised care for patients with conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease, MS and lupus.
Around one-in-ten Australians have a chronic inflammatory disease, but diagnostic tests that better detect, categorise and monitor these diseases are sorely needed, the centre reports.
Improved diagnostics would help patients along their treatment journeys which can be long due to imprecise testing options currently available.
Spatial biology (or spatial omics) is an emerging approach to understanding disease, that uses sophisticated imaging to allow scientists to explore cells in tissue samples without disturbing how they would be naturally positioned in the body. This provides a deeper understanding of disease progression and helps identify potential treatment targets.
Current diagnostic tests can provide an incomplete picture of disease, making it hard for doctors to treat promptly and with precision, leading to delays in accessing the best quality therapies. In many cases, multiple tests are needed to make a diagnosis.
L-R: Andre Carstens (Colonial Foundation), Professor Shelley Dolan (The Royal Melbourne Hospital) and Professor Ken Smith (WEHI). Credit: WEHI
The centre aims to discover new biomarkers of disease, equip doctors with the best information available, and make it more likely that more accurate results can be derived from a single test – delivering tailored treatments to patients, faster.
It will also harness rapid advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning to quickly process and learn from the large datasets generated.
Diagnoses that would have required extensive and invasive clinical testing – over days, weeks, even months – will be possible in a fraction of the time and with limited intervention, accelerating the circuit from disease discovery, to treatment.
The new centre is co-led by the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and the Royal Melbourne Hospital; and funded by the Colonial Foundation,
WEHI director Professor Ken Smith said: “Cutting-edge spatial biology technologies allow us to understand diseases at unprecedented resolution, make fundamental discoveries directly from patient samples, and can equip doctors with the information they need to make the best diagnosis.
The Royal Melbourne Hospital chief executive Professor Shelley Dolan said: “The Colonial Foundation Diagnostics Centre will enable our teams to gather in-depth information from the blood tests and biopsies we perform on patients, allowing us to better understand their disease and provide improved personalised care.
“By working together, we can ensure the centre’s research targets the most important problems our patients face.”
Colonial Foundation CEO André Carstens added: “We have a bold vision to develop new kinds of diagnostic tests to detect common inflammatory diseases and dementia, and even to determine which patients are most at risk of organ transplant rejection. It’s our hope these tests will revolutionise how these conditions are detected and treated.”
