The use of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) in cancer treatment is often limited by immune-related adverse events (irAE). The incidence of irAE in real-world practice is thought to be higher than that reported in clinical trials where older patients or people with pre-existing medical conditions are usually excluded. There are several challenges to studying real-world data and estimating this difference.
The Immuno-oncology-Related Adverse Events Project is part of the VCCC Alliance Value-Based Health Care program of work. This project estimated inference of immune-related adverse events using Victorian-wide administrative datasets:
This is the first project to elucidate the prevalence and range of irAE in a large Australian cancer population, enhancing our understanding of the impact of these adverse events in the context of ICI treatment.
Fanny obtained her PhD in Clinical Medicine from the University of Oxford in 2017. During her studies and her post doctorate, she focused on the tumour micro-environment and immune regulatory networks in colorectal cancer and metastatic disease. Dr Franchini then joined Health Data Insight in 2018 as a data science intern, where she worked on a project concerned with analysing large sets of prescription history data with the aim of inferring symptoms and co-morbidities in cancer patients.
Inspired by that experience, Dr Franchini is dedicated to bringing together her passion for cancer research and data science in a way that has a direct impact on public health, with the aim to improve prevention and precision medicine for patients. Aside from her research, Dr Franchini cares deeply about public engagement and has been closely involved with public outreach programmes aimed to raise interest in cancer research, engaging with patients and fundraisers.
Bishma Jayathilaka is a clinical pharmacist at Peter Mac. After completing a Bachelor of Pharmacy in New Zealand, she completed a Master of Public Health at the University of Melbourne and an internship at the WHO Headquarters in the Department of Health Innovation. Through her clinical work, Bishma has maintained an interest in cancer having worked in paediatric and adult cancer services. She also worked in remote, rural and metropolitan health services across Australia and New Zealand.
Bishma commenced a PhD in July 2021 under the joint supervision of Prof Maarten IJzerman, Dr George Au-Yeung and Dr Fanny Franchini. Her research is focused on risk prediction of immune-related adverse events (irAE) and aims to identify irAE occurrence in real-world data. Bishma is interested in digital health and is keen to develop her knowledge on data science methodologies. Ultimately, her research aims to contribute to the development and integration of irAE risk prediction into clinical cancer services.
