Musculoskeletal
Clinical Academic Group
Objectives
- Bring together leading SHP researchers and clinicians from diverse backgrounds, clinical areas, settings, and local health districts to add value
- Build upon existing collaborations and networks
- Create new and strengthen existing partnerships between clinician researchers and academic researchers
- Undertake effectiveness and scalability studies across SHP services
- Implement effective interventions and remove ineffective or harmful interventions to enhance musculoskeletal health
- Actively disseminate evidence through clinical tools, seminars, and workshops
- Train a new generation of translational researchers
- Focus on priority areas identified by partner health service leaders
- Engage in existing translation projects with strong clinical/academic partnerships and senior local health district leadership support, spanning various healthcare settings, including outpatient clinics, emergency departments, inpatient wards, operating theatres, primary care networks, and community services.
Research Streams & Projects
The Musculoskeletal CAG is subdivided into eight research streams, focusing on different aspects of musculoskeletal health.
Leadership Team:
- Prof. Lyn March AM (Rheumatologist Arabanoo Precinct)
- Dr Davinder Grewal-Singh (Paediatric Rheumatologist, Sydney Children’s Network)
- Dr Premarani Sinnathurai (Rheumatologist Arabanoo Precinct)
- A/Prof. Meilang Xue ( Head of Sutton Rheumatism Research Laboratory, Kolling and A3BC Headquarters)
- A/Prof. Sean O’Neill (Rheumatologist Arabanoo Precinct)
- A/Prof. Peter Youssef (Rheumatologist Patyegarang Precinct)
- Dr Bethan Richards (Rheumatologist Patyegarang Precinct)
- Prof. Mandana Nikpour (Director Sydney MSK, Rheumatologist Patyegarang Precinct)
Objectives:
Our overarching aim is provide optimal care and outcomes for children and adults living with inflammatory and autoimmune conditions by identifying early predictors of disease severity, biomarkers for response to treatments and prediction algorithms for drug free disease remission through multi-omic analyses of patient data and biospecimen collection embedded in routine care.
This network is built around A3BC – the Australian Arthritis and Autoimmune conditions Biobank Collaborative - that has its lead site at Kolling Institute as an integral part of Kolling MSK Priority Research Area and Sydney University Faculty of Medicine and Health MSK Flagship Data and Discovery Pillar. Through A3BC this CAG currently collaborates across the Sydney Health Partners (NSLHD, SLHD, WSLHD), the NSW State Wide Biobank and across other recognised Health Research Translation Centres Maridulu Budyari Gumal (SPHERE) and UQ, ANU, UNSW, Melbourne Uni, Monash Uni, Flinders Uni, South Australian Uni, UWA. A3BC was founded through philanthropy, has ongoing infrastructure funding from philanthropy, the NSW Health OHMR and underpins the 3 successful category one grants, along with two UQ collaborations that harness the A3BC infrastructure and output MRFF NINA for federated learning data linkage model and MRFF for Lifestyle Interventions to Reset Early RA.
Projects:
NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence: Better Outcomes for Inflammatory Arthritis
- Risk factor analysis and Lifestyle interventions in pre-RA
- Evaluating predictors of therapy response in early inflammatory undifferentiated arthritis, RA, PsA, AS
- Australian Juvenile Arthritis Registry
- A3BC and ARAD data-linkage analyses
- Predicting inflammatory arthritis outcomes using integrated models of diverse data towards personalised medicine (PhD – Tom Lynch)
- Medication use and management of reproductive-aged women with rheumatic disease (PhD – Dr Abhishikta Dey)
- Improving Outcomes in Juvenile-onset Rheumatic Disease (PhD – Dr Mariya Hamid)
- Predictors of response in Synovial Tissue analysis
- Activated Protein-C as potential treatment target in inflammatory and autoimmune disease – RA, PsA and SLE
- Impact of microbiome in response to treatment and disease course
- Shared Decision Making and Patient Outcomes
MRFF Effective Use of Existing Medicines
- PROSPECT study - Randomised Biologic Tapering Trial in adults with Rheumatoid and Psoriatic Arthritis.
- Multi-omic analyses and predictor algorithms
- SWAT Shared Decision Making analysis (MPhil – Dr Frank Huang)
MRFF Better Outcomes for Chronic MSK conditions in Childhood and Adolescents – A3BC for Kids
CHAMPION study - Randomised Biologic Tapering Trial in children and young adults with Juvenile Arthritis.
AJAR -registry
A3BC – biospecimen sub-study
CAG members are currently researching rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, systemic lupus erythematosus, scleroderma, inflammatory myositis, vasculitis, giant cell arteritis, and paediatric conditions including juvenile idiopathic arthritis, uveitis, dermatomyositis, lupus, Kawasaki’s disease
More information can be found on our A3BC website – a3bc.org.au
Patients, families and researchers interested in collaborating in any of these research projects or others that could harness our combined clinical, patient report, biospecimens and PBS, MBS data-linkage should contact us at info@a3bc.org.au
Leadership Team
Prof. Cathie Sherrington
Co-Chair
Prof. Lyn March
Co-Chair
Dr Jillian Eyles
Co-Chair
A/Prof. Christina Abdel Shaheed
Prof. Ian Cameron
Sonia Dixon
Consumer Representative
Dr. Giovanni Ferreira
A/Prof. Leanne Hassett
Prof. Steve Kamper
Prof. Christine Lin
Dr. Gustavo Machado
Prof. Chris Maher
Prof. Vasi Naganathan
Prof. Mandana (Mandy) Nikpour
Dr. Bethan Richards
Dr. Kate Roberts
Dr. Jobe Shatrov
Dr. Verinder Sidhu
Dr. Rani Sinnathurai
Dr. Pushpa Suriyaarachchi
Dr. Tiê Parma Yamato
Prof. Andreas Zankl
Disciplines represented in the leadership team
Physiotherapy, Geriatric Medicine, Rheumatology, Rehabilitation, Orthopaedic Surgery, Genetics, Emergency Medicine, Pharmacy, Public Health