Plans to position WA as the global leader of precision medicine are in motion with the launch of the Australian National Phenome Centre (ANPC), led by Murdoch University.

The ANPC could help to transform the health of every person in Western Australia, and billions more around the world.

It could help you to lose weight through a better understanding of the unique bacterial environment existing in your gut, and how the foods you eat and the medicines you ingest are metabolised. It could help to predict whether you and your loved ones will develop cancer, diabetes or Alzheimer’s. And it could help to stem the progression of such diseases by guiding preventative measures and tailored treatments. 

It could even help to change the health of entire communities and governmental public health policy.

The potential to change lives on a large scale is quite staggering, and it all depends on better understanding an individual’s phenome. A person’s phenome is a snapshot of their unique biology resulting from the complex interactions between environmental factors like diets and pollutants, and the genetic factors that set the stage for human health and disease.

The study of phenomes – known as phenomics – can help us to understand how this unique biology makes us more or less susceptible to a wide range of diseases and how we are likely to respond to treatments. The right treatment reduces the duration of an illness and even the length of time spent in hospital.

Empowering medical professionals

Studies on the health of large numbers of people, in some cases entire communities, will provide information about environmental influences on our health. Risk factors for disease in communities and the development of preventative measures and programs will be the ANPC’s core business. 

As the State’s Chief Scientist Peter Klinken has said, it will help to empower our medical professionals and politicians as they guide our ageing population into longer and healthier futures.

Phenomics is a relatively new field in biological research, and represents the next step in expanding the boundaries of our knowledge of human health, precision medicine and the causes and prevention of disease.

And the most important work in this field is going to originate from our new centre right here in Perth.

Proposed for the Fiona Stanley Hospital precinct adjacent to our Murdoch campus, the ANPC will house an impressive array of infrastructure. The largest collection of mass spectrometers in the southern hemisphere and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy machines will enable researchers to carry out large scale and sophisticated analysis of biological samples like blood or urine.

This is a “Team WA” effort bringing together all of the Universities, hospitals, medical research centres and other partners.

World-renowned phenomics pioneer Professor Jeremy Nicholson will lead the ANPC, and the appointment of distinguished biologist Professor Elaine Holmes as the 2018 WA Premier’s Fellow in Phenomics, along with Dr Ruey Leng Loo, the WA Premier’s Early to Mid-Career Fellow, means Perth has attracted the very best researchers in this field.

Transferring from Imperial College London, they will make the ANPC the international centre of expertise and excellence in metabolic phenotyping, linking its research with similar centres in China, Singapore, Hong Kong, London and Birmingham.

The ANPC, as part of the International Phenome Centre Network, also has the capacity to interlink with other universities using harmonised technologies and methods to help solve the riddles of rare diseases and not so rare diseases like diabetes.

We expect to attract other outstanding researchers not only in health but also in food production and drug discovery via the bioprospecting of WA’s unique biodiversity.  Already this initiative is attracting investment in training, interest from collaborators and research students nationally and internationally, creating jobs in WA.

A project of this scale could not have been realised without our collaborators: the other four WA universities (Curtin, Edith Cowan, the University of Notre Dame and UWA), medical research institutes (Telethon Kids Institute, Perkins and Perron), major hospitals (Fiona Stanley, Royal Perth Hospital) and industry partners, all under the umbrella of the Western Australian Health Translation Network (WAHTN). Significant support has also come from the WA State Government and the Australian Research Council.

The uses and benefits of this game-changing research are phenomenal. We should all be extremely proud that Western Australia has the talent, energy and foresight to bring such a remarkable medical research project to our state.

Pictured: Professors Elaine Holmes and Jeremy Nicholson.

The article was originally published in the West Australian.