A CURTIN University ‘nano-tech guy’ is part of a research project to microchip children with cancer to ensure drug treatments are safe and effective.
Hani Al-Salami, of Bayswater, said the technology was being designed in Europe and Australia for people who require toxic levels of drugs.
“For more chronic disease you need continuous use of drugs,” Dr Al-Salami said.
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He said drug toxicity was the main source of side effects, and could be fatal.
The technology could eventually be applied to people with diabetes where the levels of drug intake varies throughout the day.
Patients involved in the continuous recruitment trial live in Europe and are under 16 years of age.
“Europe has more access to patients because there’s more people and the funding is based there,” Dr Hani Al-Salami said.
The team includes select experts from Germany, France and Serbia who will travel between Australia and Europe over a four-year period to conduct their research.
There are people from different fields of science involved, plus representatives from the pharmaceutical industry.
Dr Hani Al-Salami is leading the Australian cohort of the MEDLEM project.
He described the technology as “a nano-chip with detection capability that sends measurements through an in-house designed WiFi system to an in-house developed database”.
The measurements would be real time and avoid continuous testing through blood sampling.
Curtin University is the only Australian institution selected to take part in the MEDLEM project, funded by the EU Horizon 2020 grant.
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