What are the fundamental issues with the way medical research is incentivised and conducted? And once translated into clinical practice, how do these issues ultimately affect patients? We all know that research informs every aspect of medical practise: the drugs we use, the treatments we offer and the outcomes we expect. But medical research is far from perfect. Researchers and clinicians are under immense pressure to continuously produce research output, with career advancement dependent on it. Meanwhile, scientists compete for increasingly limited sources of funding. Throw profits into the mix, and favourable results are selectively published, while the reproducibility of data suffers. So at the end of the day: can we trust the evidence? This session will be presented by Professor Grant McArthur, Executive Director of the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre.
Speaker:
Professor Grant McArthur
Professor Grant McArthur has an international and national reputation as a leader in the treatment of melanoma, co-chairing large multi-faceted basic research and clinical programs. His research interests include discovery of novel drug targets in cancer, targeting oncogenes, clinical trials of targeted therapeutics, personalised medicine, and melanoma. Prof McArthur is currently the Executive Director for the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre. He is Head of the Molecular Oncology Laboratory there, holds the Lorenzo Galli Chair in Melanoma and Skin Cancers at the University of Melbourne, and is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health & Medical Science (AAHMS) and the Royal Australasian College of Physicians.