WATCH: Advanced Therapeutics Webinar 6: Who you gonna call? Drug busters!

Our Advanced Therapeutics Webinar has returned in 2022 with "Who you gonna call? Drug busters!". In this 6th episode of the series we focused on pharmacy considerations for working with Advanced Therapeutics.

Hosted by Acting Director of Research, Dr Paula Bray and Advanced Therapeutics Medical Lead at Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick, Dr Laura Fawcett, we heard from three senior pharmacists at Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network about their experience in gene therapy, CAR T-cell therapy and phage therapy.

In the extended 90 minute session our experts, Joni Donagher, Kyall Homberg and Tony Lai, discussed how they have navigated this new frontier, followed by a Q&A session with webinar attendees.

Speakers

Joni Donagher:

Joni Donagher is a senior pharmacist with more than 10 years’ experience in public hospitals in Australia, working across a variety of clinical and governance roles. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Brighton in the UK before moving to Australia and undertaking a postgraduate masters in clinical pharmacy with the University of Queensland, investigating therapeutic drug monitoring and the utility of Bayesian drug dosing in high risk populations. She is an active member of the society of hospital pharmacy Australia. 

She has been with SCHN for over five years and currently works as a clinical trials and project pharmacist, leading to her work within the gene therapy and Advanced Therapeutics space.

Kyall Homberg:

Kyall Homberg is the Bone Marrow Transplant and cellular therapies pharmacist at Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick, with a decade of experience in paediatric pharmacy. He’s responsible for delivering quality pharmacy services, including the development of guidelines, the medication management of complex patients, including highly specialised chemotherapy agents used in conditioning regimes and he provides decision support and practical treatment advice for CAR T-cell-related complications and side effects.

In the past 18 months Kyall has had about six CAR T-cell patients, where he’s assisted with protocol preparation for CAR T-cell conditioning, as well as procuring conditioning agents and supportive care.

Tony Lai:

Tony Lai is a senior clinical pharmacist at The Children's Hospital at Westmead and an Honorary Clinical Lecturer at the University of Sydney. He holds clinical expertise in antimicrobial stewardship and infectious diseases and his research interests include antimicrobial dose optimisation and therapeutic drug monitoring.

Tony has been a member of the NSW Clinical Excellence Commissions antimicrobial stewardship expert committee since its inception in 2012. He has been an integral member of the infectious diseases team providing phage therapy to paediatric patients at SCHN and is a recognised national expert in the pharmacy management of phage therapy in Australia.