Previous Grant-in-Aid Winners
See our previous award winners and read about how the Grant-in-Aid funding has assisted their research.
2023
A/Prof Natasha Smallwood and Ms Catherine Buchan received the 2023 PACT Grant-in-Aid for their study “A phase II randomised crossover trial to assess feasibility of domiciliary Nasal high Flow for chronic breathlessNess in people with InTerstial lung disEase (INFINITE)”.
This study (INFINITE) will determine if people with PF and breathlessness are willing and able to take part in a pilot study using Nasal Hight Flow (NHF) (air only) each night at home over four weeks. Importantly, it will also determine if home NHF therapy can improve breathlessness, poor sleep, activity levels, and quality of life, as well as evaluate the use of remote monitoring devices, which will enable conduct of this trial entirely in peoples’ homes.
2022
Dr Barnes sat down with the PACT team in 2022 to talk about her project – Discovering Radiological Biomarkers in Silicosis using Artificial Intelligence.
Describe your clinical research project in a couple of sentences:
I am currently working on artificial intelligence biomarkers to better analyse CT scans for silicosis patients, to predict who will develop fibrosis. Unfortunately, there has been a surge in silicosis cases in Australia from those working in the stone benchtop industry. Screening programs are now in place, but it is difficult to determine who will progress to Pulmonary Fibrosis. Developing biomarkers using AI means these biomarkers can be used in settings where expert Radiologists are not so accessible.
Tell us how this project came about:
This work extends from my PhD work which examined AI CT biomarkers in hypersensitivity pneumonitis. There are lots of exciting projects using AI in PF, and several researchers in the PACT network including Prof Corte and Dr John Macintosh doing great research in this area.
What do you hope this project will achieve?
We hope this project will identify biomarkers that can be used in detecting which patients with silicosis will develop Pulmonary Fibrosis. We also expect this technology can be translated to use in other Pulmonary Fibrosis conditions.
What will the support of the PACT Grant-in-Aid mean for your clinical research?
The PACT Grant-in-aid will support the expertise of AI engineers to get the best out of our data.
2021
Dr Yet Khor sat down with the PACT team in 2021 to talk about her project – Understanding overnight oximetry in fibrotic interstitial lung disease.
Describe your clinical research project in a couple of sentences:
This project evaluates how supplemental oxygen affect sleep structure and quality, as well as systemic inflammation, in people with pulmonary fibrosis using detailed assessments with sleep studies, questionnaires, and blood measurements. As part of this study, we will also assess the use of overnight monitoring using a pulse oximeter, which is a small device clipped to a finger to measure blood oxygen levels, to detect sleep apnoea in this population.
Tell us how this project came about:
I was attending a talk on recent advances in sleep physiology by Simon Joosten (an NHMRC early career fellow at Monash University) at the TSANZ Victoria branch Annual Scientific Meeting in 2019, when the idea first came. We have limited understanding about sleep health in pulmonary fibrosis, as very little research has been done. I caught up with Simon after his talk, and we came up with a few studies evaluating different aspects of sleep health in pulmonary fibrosis. This project is one of those. It is also a question I have with regards to oxygen use in pulmonary fibrosis.
What do you hope this project will achieve?
I hope this project will give us data about the acute effects of supplemental oxygen during sleep in pulmonary fibrosis. Also, how can we use a pulse oximeter for overnight assessments, given sleep studies are expensive and can be hard to get one depending on where one lives. We can then use these results to design and get further funding to study the long-term effects of supplemental oxygen during sleep in pulmonary fibrosis. In the long run, I hope that this project will contribute to better sleep health and daytime function in people with pulmonary fibrosis.
What will the support of the PACT Grant-in-Aid mean for your clinical research?
Very grateful to receive the PACT Grant-in-Aid, which provides funding for equipment and support required for home overnight oximetry monitoring. This allows us to expand our project to evaluate the value of this simple assessment for use in people with pulmonary fibrosis.
2019
Dr Lauren Troy, Lead Investigator on the COLDICE Study and recipient of the inaugural PACT Grant-in-Aid for Investigator Led Pulmonary Fibrosis Clinical Research shared some insight into her study in 2019.
Describe your trial in a couple of sentences:
The COLDICE (Cryobiopsy versus Open Lung biopsy in the Diagnosis of Interstitial lung disease allianCE) Study is looking at how the cryobiopsy compares with the traditional surgical lung biopsy for ILD diagnosis. The cryobiopsy is a new technique for taking small samples of lung tissue through the airways, rather than through the chest wall, as is the current approach for surgical biopsies. The samples from cryobiopsy are much smaller than surgical biopsies, so it is not yet known if they are as accurate or reliable. Our study will help to answer this question, and hopefully inform clinicians when diagnosing their patients.
Tell us how this trial/ came about:
The COLDICE Study came about in 2015 when a few of us in the ILD Clinic heard about cryobiopsy being used with enthusiasm in some European hospitals. I remember having a chat over a team coffee about whether cryobiopsy results were accurate. We decided that we would create a study to answer the question. My colleague Dr Edmund Lau and I travelled to Tubingen in Germany to be trained in this new technique. We then collaborated with Dr Jonathan Williamson from Liverpool Hospital in Sydney, for further training. There was a lot of interest from many Australian hospitals. In the end, 9 sites took part in the study, which finished recruiting in April 2019. There was interest from New Zealand and American sites to join as well, but for logistical reasons it ultimately wasn’t possible. The study has been mentioned at international conferences and results are now awaited by the ILD community.
What do you hope this trial will achieve?
We hope to answer the question of whether cryobiopsies are a suitable alternative to surgical lung biopsies for ILD diagnosis. This is an important question, as the surgical lung biopsies carry some risk. Many ILD patients are too unwell to have a surgical biopsy so their diagnosis remains uncertain. This can impact on treatment decisions and outcomes. If there is a safer, reliable way to make a diagnosis, this would be preferable for many patients. Our preliminary results are very encouraging and support the role of cryobiopsy.
What will the support of the PACT Grant-in-Aid mean for your clinical research/trial?
We are really grateful to receive the PACT Grant-in-Aid funding, which we plan to use for further research into specialised diagnostic testing in interstitial lung disease (ILD). We are hoping to extend the findings of the COLDICE study, incorporating new technologies such as digital pathology, micro-CT scanning and molecular sequencing. The field of ILD diagnosis is evolving at a rapid rate and our aim is to contribute to this in some way.