Since we last met Adam Bryant in 2008, he has come full circle in both his career and his travels of the world.

We start at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney

It was in 2008 that Adam was awarded an Arrow Hawkesbury Canoe Classic PhD scholarship to help fund his work in molecular biology of leukaemia as conducted at the St Vincent’s Centre for Applied Medical Research with Professor David Ma.

Prior to the commencement of his PhD, Adam had been working as a Haematology Registrar under the guidance of Associate Professor Anthony Dodds and Professor John Moore at St Vincent’s Hospital. Adam had been drawn to haematology as “Blood cancers affect such a broad range of people, including the very young and young adults. It’s a difficult treatment process to watch people go through and there is an opportunity to work with people to improve their outcomes.”

Making the switch from a practicing haematologist to a researcher during his PhD was daunting at first, however Adam felt that it was an important thing to do, knowing that the work he would conduct in the laboratory would be crucial in helping to advance his understanding of blood diseases in his day-to-day management of blood cancer patients.

So, Adam made the switch. Putting aside the training he had done since he was 17 to become a doctor and then a specialist haematologist, Adam started from scratch learning how to become a scientist. At the time Adam said this would be “the challenge of his life”.

Next stop, Vancouver

After completing his PhD research in 2012, Adam travelled to Vancouver General Hospital in Canada where he was offered a position as a Fellow in their Bone Marrow Transplant Unit. Adam took the opportunity with the aim of seeking experience abroad and bringing his newly found skills and ideas back to Australia.

And that Adam did. Four years later Adam came full circle returning home to Australia taking up a role as a Senior Staff Haematology Specialist at Liverpool Hospital, which at the time, had just begun offering bone marrow and stem cell transplants.

And now, Liverpool Hospital, Sydney

Liverpool Hospital, which serves South Western Sydney, is a relatively small transplant centre, but it serves a big population that is linguistically and ethnically diverse. While this leads to the richness that a great melting pot of cultures, ideas and world views brings, it also means that finding matched bone marrow donors can sometimes be difficult. As a result, Liverpool Hospital does a lot of haploidentical transplants (where donor and recipient are only half-matched). Being on the southern side of the greater Sydney area also means that Liverpool Hospital sees a number of patients from other areas, like Canberra for example, who travel to Liverpool for bone marrow or stem cell transplants.

Since joining Liverpool Hospital, Adam has also enjoyed developing his “claim to fame” as a specialist in treating Multiple Myeloma patients and has continued to focus on research as Chair of the burgeoning Haematology Clinical Trials Unit. This unit has grown from just two or three staff about five years ago to now having 16 fulltime equivalent staff and two clinical trials Fellows. He credits the contribution of his PhD as “teaching me how to conduct good research, and how to write” which has led to his continued involvement in research.

Passionate about equity

Adam is passionate about his work at Liverpool Hospital and is motivated to highlight the needs of people in areas such as Liverpool. “This is an area that is underprivileged and underserviced from a medical perspective, with less than equitable access to things like clinical trials. I want to address that inequity and help bring clinical trials from the bigger inner-city hospitals out to South Western Sydney.”

With big plans ahead, and plenty achieved already, we asked Adam about the growth of his career since his PhD. Adam said, “I’m grateful for the financial support I received from Arrow at that time. I’m proud to be able to use my scientific research skills to help make what is a very difficult treatment journey more tolerable, and to improve outcomes for transplant patients.”

And we are proud too. Congratulations Adam on all of you have achieved since we first met and supported you with a scholarship over 15 years ago. The progress of your career and the development of your education, learning and experience is gratefully received by your patients and all those impacted by bone marrow and stem cell transplants.