Australian-Israeli doctor receives research grant

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Shani Paluch-Shimon’s pioneering research in the fight against breast cancer has recently been rewarded with a prestigious grant from the US-based Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

Professor Paluch-Shimon’s research aims to improve breast cancer care for ultra-Orthodox and Arab women.

Originally from Melbourne, when Paluch-Shimon moved to Jerusalem she found the healthcare differences striking compared to central Israel. Jerusalem is Israel’s largest city but it is also its poorest, and ultra-Orthodox women and Arab women in Jerusalem have lower survival rates for breast cancer than in the rest of the country.

Hadassah has two campuses – one in West Jerusalem and one in East Jerusalem, and Paluch-Shimon credits Hadassah with creating a “model of coexistence” in which Jewish, Muslim and Christian healthcare staff work side by side for the best outcomes for their culturally diverse patients.

“It’s a model of hope for how things can be, and I think that’s always been part of the ethos of Hadassah, which is why I feel I can do the research there successfully,” she said.

Paluch-Shimon studied medicine at Monash University and moved to Israel in 2002 where she completed her oncology training at the Sheba Medical Centre. During her medical studies, sadly her mother passed away from breast cancer when she was 31.

“I have a picture of her in my room, and it reminds me of what it is like for the person sitting on the other side of the table,” she shared.

Discussing advances in treatment and screenings for breast cancer, Paluch-Shimon said that breast screenings are likely to change over the next decade and become more personalised based on individual risk. “With the advent of artificial intelligence technologies and the use of deep learning models, we’re going to be seeing completely different approaches.”

For example, she said mammograms in the future may be able to predict the likelihood of breast cancer developing.

“A lot of cancer screenings will be done through blood tests in the future,” she said, adding there are “already tests doing that” but they are not sensitive enough yet to test for early breast cancer. She noted a blood test to detect cancer on the market was developed by Hebrew University.

Paluch-Shimon is also a leader in breast cancer genetics and encourages Ashkenazi Jews to be screened for the BRCA gene. Around 5-10 per cent of breast and ovarian cancer diagnoses are due to an inherited predisposition, including BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations.

In Israel there is free BRCA genetic testing for all Jewish women over 25 with Ashkenazi ancestry in the public health system.

In Australia, BRCA testing is free in NSW for women and men of Jewish ancestry through the Wolper Jewish Hospital, where DNA collection kits are sent in the mail. There is no general free screening for Australian Ashkenazi Jews outside of NSW.

Sharing what it has been like to be a doctor in Israel post October 7, 2023, Paluch-Shimon said that while the rest of the country stopped, her work as a doctor continued, treating people who had cancer including breast cancer patients suffering trauma from the October 7 massacre who had been displaced from the south.

She said that while she received support from international colleagues, “small pockets of academic boycotts” presented a challenge.

A Breast Cancer in Young Women International Conference to be held in Dubai in October 2024 was cancelled after calls for Paluch-Shimon to step down as chair because she is Israeli. The European society responsible for the conference made an executive decision to cancel the conference rather than ask Paluch-Shimon to step down.

She remarked, “It was important for me not to cancel my participation in overseas conferences where I had been invited … it was important to me to wear my hostage badge … I don’t care if there was backlash, we are not going to be silent when ‘never again’ happened again.”