4 March 2020 02.00pm - 03.00pm Australia/Sydney

A number of disorders, such as sickle cell anaemia, are triggered by defective adult haemoglobin. Sickle cell anaemia and beta thalassemia are the most common single-gene genetic disorders in the world, affecting millions of people, with enormous costs to health systems. Research has solved the 50-year-old mystery about how these mutations - which are naturally carried by a small percentage of people - operate and alter the expression of human genes.

Discovering the mutation responsible means that CRISPR gene editing whereby natural mutations are introduced. These can be used to turn on beneficial genes or repress harmful genes and, for example, boost red cell production of fetal haemoglobin.

With this discovery, there is potentially a way to fast-track the development of new therapies for sickle cell disease and other inherited conditions using CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing.

13 May 2020 01:30pm - 02:30pm Australia/Sydney

A series of data, studies and experiments will be presented that demonstrates the impact of iron deficiency on human health and performance.

Anaemia is increasingly recognized as an interventional haematological target in patients before major surgery. Preoperative anaemia increases the need for perioperative blood transfusion, and there is now a well-recognized association with increased patient complications, length of hospital stay, and worse outcomes.

The most common cause for anaemia in the preoperative patient is iron deficiency, which can be absolute (due to nutritional deficiency and blood loss) or indirect (by inflammatory mediated disruption in iron transport leading to a state of functional iron deficiency). The important aspect is that Iron deficiency occurs before anaemia, as anaemia only arises when the bone marrow is devoid of iron to make new red cells.

Iron is also important form cellular function and cellular respiration. Conversion of Oxygen and Glucose to energy (ATP) through aerobic metabolism occurs in the mitochondria of every cell, and the key component of mitochondrial cytochromes is iron. Iron deficiency results in reduced aerobic metabolism and may explain the plethora of patient symptoms; muscle aches, shortness of breath, palpitations brain fog etc. These are from iron deficiency, not anaemia. After all, a person three days after blood transfusion who is anaemic does not mimic the symptoms of a person with iron deficiency.

8 July 2020 01:30pm - 02:30pm Australia/Sydney

Blood transfusion in Australia is extremely safe by international standards. 

With respect to infectious disease transmission, the highest remaining risk is from bacterial contamination of platelets. Platelets are stored at room temperature, providing a relatively favourable environment for replication of bacterial contaminants introduced during collection or processing. Shelf life is limited to only 5 days, chiefly to reduce the risk of septic transfusion reactions. 

The result is a significant number of platelet units which are discarded despite being otherwise safe and clinically effective. The presentation will give an overview of current approaches to bacterial contamination screening in Australia, alternative approaches used internationally, and options to extend shelf life while maintaining or improving safety.

2 September 2020 01:30pm - 02:30pm Australia/Sydney

This presentation will cover the basic immunogenetics involved in transplantation matching and how we use HLA epitope science to fine tune the degree of matching at the immune response level.

HLA antibodies are a contraindication in transplantation and many recipients have pre formed antibodies from previous transplants, pregnancy and transfusion. Finding a suitable match for these patients is challenging and we have employed a newly established approach using HLA epitope science to refine the immunology. Typically this process has been used for highly sensitised patients but has now been applied pre-emptively in paediatric patients for their first transplant to stop any future antibodies. 

11 November 2020 01:30pm - 02:30pm Australia/Sydney

This presentation will provide an overview of the resources developed by the Lifeblood Transfusion Policy and Education (TPE) across the different career segments and explain how they contribute to patient blood management (PBM).

The TPE team provides a supporting role in patient care through development and delivery of traditional and innovative education and clinical practice improvement support tools to enhance transfusion and PBM practice. 

13 March 2019 01:30pm - 02:30pm Australia/Sydney

This session will discuss the impact of red cell transfusion in improving patient functional status in chronic disease.

May 2019

This session will review the history of patient blood management and transfusion medicine from 1880 to 2018.

Prerecorded session 

This session will present the role a Milk Bank plays and the processes taken to establish the service.

11 September 2019 01:30pm - 02:30pm Australia/Sydney

This session will discuss the increasing use of Faecal Microbiota Transplantation (FMT) in treating gastrointestinal conditions. Collection and preparation of FMT material is a developing area but regulatory and bureaucratic issues remain unresolved.