300 and counting: RAH hits milestone for landmark cancer registry at SAHMRI
07 May 2025
The Royal Adelaide Hospital has enrolled its 300th participant on the Australian Particle Therapy Clinical Quality Registry (ASPIRE).
ASPIRE Registry Project Manager and Principal Investigator, Kelly Skelton says that, although recruitment has expanded significantly across five states and territories, the RAH has driven the great majority of enrolments to date.
“The RAH was our first recruitment site, with much appreciated funding from The Hospital Research Foundation Group,” Kelly said.
“We now have well over 300 people enrolled and the RAH has been responsible for the great majority of those.
“The nurses at the RAH Radiation Oncology Department have been vital in ASPIRE’s rapid growth, which is attracting significant attention from the cancer treatment community.”
The SAHMRI-based ASPIRE Registry is a prospective, observational study of paediatric, adolescent, young adult and rare adult tumour patients.It enrols patients who have been treated with radiation therapy in order to better understand and compare the short and long-term benefits of the different types of radiotherapy.
“ASPIRE is creating one of the largest international datasets to enable comparison of two types of cancer radiation treatment; the more conventional photon treatment and the newer proton beam therapy (PBT),” Ms Skelton said.
A/Prof Hien Le is the Head of Research in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the RAH and ASPIRE’s Chief Principal Investigator. He says recruitment began in April 2022 but was initially only for people whose treatment was included on the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS).
“In January of 2024, we expanded ASPIRE to include non-MBS treatments which saw a significant increase in recruitment at the RAH,” he said.
“We have gone from recruiting a few patients each month to consistently three or more per week.”
ASPIRE was established in direct response to recommendations from the Australian Medical Services Advisory Committee, in consultation with Department of Health, during the application process to have PBT listed on the Medicare Benefits Schedule. It is hoped the registry will assist in describing the long-term effects and disease control outcomes for patients having radiotherapy as part of their cancer treatment.
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SAHMRI is located on Kaurna Country. We pay respects to the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. We are committed to embracing knowledge and culture as we continue our working journey to incorporate Aboriginal health research across all of our themes and further reconciliation.
Read more"Tirki nguta tappa tangka marninithi"
(Learning and knowledge are the pathway to alter the mind)
- Uncle Lewis Yerloburka O’Brien, Kaurna Elder
