About Monash Health Haematology
Monash Health Haematology is a dynamic clinical and laboratory service that integrates research and the best evidence base into routine patient care.
We provide haematology care to an approximately 1.3 million-person population, making our service one of the largest in Australia.
Our mission is to improve the health and well-being of patients with blood diseases by providing the best care to every patient through integrated clinical practice, education, and research. We are responsible for training our future workforce by integrating our clinical services with teaching and academia.
Key leadership areas in clinical care and research include:
- Lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukaemia
- Acute leukaemias and myelodysplastic syndromes
- Venous thromboembolic disease and disorders of haemostasis
- Thalassaemia and other haemoglobinopathies
- Multiple myeloma
- Transfusion medicine and supportive care
- Chronic myeloid leukaemia and myeloproliferative neoplasms
- Obstetric Haematology
- Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) haematology and survivorship
Our unit is actively involved in exploring new models of healthcare delivery, the development of personalised diagnostics, and developing the next generation of cellular therapies for malignant blood disease and autoimmune disorders.
Monash Health Haematology has an international reputation for clinical research and a large trial portfolio, including many first-in-human, investigator-initiated, and cooperative trial group studies. Its researchers are key players in several national and international clinical registries and are actively involved in service optimisation through clinical audits.
We are active collaborators with other leading academic organisations, including the School of Clinical Sciences at Monash Health (Monash University), Hudson Institute for Medical Research, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Australasian Leukaemia and Lymphoma Group, and the Children’s Oncology Group.
Through our partnership with Monash University, we have an embedded basic science and translational research programme within the state-of-the-art Monash Health Translational facility. Our research groups include the ‘Blood Cancer Therapeutics Laboratory’, the ‘Blood Cancer Biomarkers Laboratory’, the ‘Lymphoma Research Group’ and the ‘Leukaemia Modelling and Therapeutic Discovery Laboratory’.
Cellular Therapies
Blood cancer treatment is entering a new and exciting era, heralded by the advent of potent and precise immune therapies. ‘Cellular Therapy’ includes bone marrow stem cell transplant and CAR-T treatments. CAR-T (chimeric antigen receptor T cells) is a term used to describe ‘living drugs’ engineered from donor or patient immune cells that are re-programmed to recognise and kill cancer cells.
Monash Health Haematology is excited to offer state-of-art cellular therapies as a part of our service.
Autologous haematopoietic stem cell transplantation
This is one of the most established forms of cellular therapies and is used to treat a variety of haematological cancers and some autoimmune diseases. In autologous stem cell transplant (ASCT), the patient’s own bone marrow stem cells are collected and reinfused after killing tumour cells with high-dose chemotherapy. Initiated in collaboration with the Cell Therapy service at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Monash Health has now established an active ASCT program. ASCT is offered to potentially cure several lymphomas in relapsed settings and as a front-line therapy in multiple myeloma and mantle cell lymphoma.
CAR-T therapy (chimeric antigen receptor T cells)
CAR-T cell therapy is the latest form of cellular therapy. It involves genetically modifying immune cells (specifically T lymphocytes) to recognise and kill cancer cells.
Autologous (patient’s own) CAR-T cell therapy is now approved to treat adult aggressive B-cell lymphoma and B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in children and young adults. CAR-T cell therapy in other blood cancers, including multiple myeloma, as well as allogeneic (donor-driven) CAR-T cell therapy, is also available in clinical trials.
Through our trials unit and partnership with the Hudson Institute in the Monash Health Translation Precinct, Monash Health Haematology now provides CAR-T therapy as part of clinical trials for blood cancers such as lymphoma and autoimmune diseases, including lupus.
Our Haematology team
Director of Clinical Haematology: Professor Jake Shortt
Director of Laboratory Haematology: Associate Professor Sanjeev D Chunilal