State-Wide Facilities and Studies
WAIMR plays an important role for the Western Australian community by housing a number of state-wide facilities and conducting a number of state-wide studies. These include:
Joondalup Family Health Study
The Joondalup Family Health Study (JFHS) will essentially be a contemporary, metropolitan version of the highly successful Busselton Health Study, which has provided 30 years of population-based health data and has led to improved health outcomes in a number of chronic diseases such as asthma and cardiovascular disease. The planned study will also have a strong focus on families and the health of both children and adults.
Participation in the JFHS will be entirely voluntary. Volunteers will be asked to undergo a comprehensive health check approximately every 3 years. The appointment will include questions about lifestyle and diet, in addition to height, weight and other tests such as heart, lung, vision and hearing tests.
For more information visit www.jfhs.org.au.
Lotterywest State Biomedical Research Facility
The Lotterywest State Biomedical Research Facility was established with a generous grant from Lotterywest. The Facility allows the medical research community access to state-of-the-art microarray instrumentation and services, utilising the Affymetrix GeneChip technology.
WAIMR has signed a new management deal with Perth-based company Proteomics International that will see the company operate and manage the new proteomics equipment located in the Lotterywest State Biomedical Research Facility.
The deal ensures the Facility's new state-of-the-art research equipment will be utilised to maximum capacity. Proteomics is a burgeoning new research area that WA has the capacity to drive internationally. It is an exciting new field of science that promises to speed-up drug discovery and development to tackle disease.
For more information visit www.proteomics.com.au.
Monoclonal Antibody Facility
With the support of UWA and the Wind Over Water Foundation, WAIMR has established the WA Monoclonal Antibody Facility. Headed by Kathy Davern, it is the first of its kind in WA.
The state-of-the-art facility is now producing pure antibodies needed for medical or research purposes. It has been embraced by researchers as well as biotechnology companies, which now have access to the custom-made antibodies necessary to develop new products such as diagnostic tools.
WAIMR believes the Monoclonal Antibody Facility provides a unique opportunity for WA to become a major player in the international pharmaceutical industry. Globally, the biotechnology industry is booming, with the production of antibodies for use in the medical field and research arena worth more than $10 billion annually.
Monoclonal antibodies have been used to successfully treat breast cancer, lymphoma, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, leukaemia and in transplants to minimise the chances of organ rejection.
For more information visit www.absolutions.org.au.
WA DNA Bank
The Western Australian DNA Bank (WADB) is a world-class resource helping WA and Australian medical researchers to more easily conduct larger-scale health studies and so speed up their search for life-changing discoveries.
The project, funded by the Federal Government through the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, provides scientists with a state-of-the-art facility to store DNA samples needed to undertake critical medical research into common diseases such as breast cancer, colorectal cancer, and heart disease.
The WADB brings large numbers of DNA samples under one roof in a highly secure way, and because of this, it is of extraordinary value to the nation's scientific community.
By helping to aid Australian researchers' access to larger collections of DNA samples, which can often be expensive and time consuming to collect, the outcomes of their studies are likely to be more reliable, therefore having an increased impact on the health of our community.
For more information visit www.wadb.org.au.
WA Genetic Epidemiology Resource
The Western Australian Genetic Epidemiology Resource (WAGER) aims to develop a national resource for genetic epidemiology that will build on the unique WA population health data collected and managed over the last 3 decades. These data are based on linkage within and between the WA statutory collections (all births, deaths, hospitalisations, mental health services contacts, cancer registrations) and additional population disease registers and health surveys.
For more information visit www.wager.org.au.
