Investigators: Stephen Stick, Tim Rosenow, Oded Breuer, Barry Clements, Andre Schultz, Nat Eiffler, Alexia Foti, Joseph Bartlett, Luke Berry, Nadzirah Bashir, Rebecca Langford, Renee La Grange, Samuel Montgomery, Yuliya Karpievitch
External collaborators: Harm Tiddens (Erasmus University Medical Centre), Sarath Ranganathan (Murdoch Children's Research Institute)
The Early Surveillance Program (ESP) is the platform upon which the AREST CF research program is based. Children attending CF clinics in Perth and Melbourne participate in the ESP from the time of diagnosis onwards. The ESP includes bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL, to assess airway inflammation, infection and other markers of disease), imaging (CT scan, to measure structural lung disease) and lung function measurements. Researchers are able to track the progress of lung disease through a comprehensive longitudinal set of biological samples, images and data archives.
The ESP is now embedded in standard clinical practice in both Australian centres, and is in the process of being adopted by centres in the Netherlands and Switzerland. Since 2012, Professor Stick and A/Prof Sarath Ranganathan (Melbourne) were supported by a US Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Therapeutics grant to maintain and expand this program.