Professor Phillip Stricker has received five grants from the St Vincent’s Clinic Foundation and has been involved in research on another four grants.
In 2013 he received the K & A Collins Cancer Research Grant for the project “Reducing unnecessary biopsies and missing less prostate cancers on biopsy through the use of MRI, PCA-3 and PHI in men with an elevated PSA.”
According to Professor Stricker: “The project told us whether a repeat blood test, urine, special genetic tests or imaging with MRI would be best for follow ups for patients and we found very clearly that imaging with MRI was the answer, which helped us to not waste money doing unnecessary tests and give people a very strong recommendation based on an imaging test rather than subjecting them to unnecessary biopsies.”
The value of research to clinicians is acknowledged by Professor Stricker: “I think that research and clinical work go hand in hand. You invariably have questions that come up during clinical work and if you don’t have the funds to investigate those questions you may never get answers.”
“It is much better if a clinician does research because they are at the coalface. They see the problems and they get the real questions that might change patients’ lives, rather than the person in a laboratory who doesn’t really see the clinical problems.” 
He believes that research and technology have put St Vincent’s at the forefront for treatment: “Many patients with prostate cancer seek many opinions and when you offer them new technology, such as a gamma camera with a Geiger monitor to find where the cancer has spread to in real time during surgery, people will prefer that to a hit and miss procedure. People choose St Vincent’s because the latest technology is available for diagnosis and treatment.”
One of the aims of the St Vincent’s Clinic Foundation grants is to enable further funding for research from other sources and Professor Stricker’s study achieved this: “With our imaging studies – the original seed funding from St Vincent’s Clinic Foundation over many years meant that we had a body of projects and publications that gave us a great profile and ultimately led to the Federal Government giving our group five and a half million dollars over four years for a prostate cancer research centre. Without the funding from the St Vincent’s Clinic Foundation we wouldn’t have had the publication record that would have justified receiving Federal funding.”
“I think it’s mandatory that research comes from clinicians and that the clinicians are sitting in the Clinic and the Clinic Foundation funds that type of research that is often not funded by other institutions.”