MEDIA RELEASE
14 FEBRUARY 2012
Pathologists at the forefront of personalised cancer treatment
A new study on mutation testing in lung cancer highlights the advantages of multi-gene
testing to provide patients with effective personalised medicine. A/Prof Sandra O’Toole, coauthor of the new report and spokesperson for The Royal College of Pathologists of
Australasia (RCPA), explained that this is one of the first papers in Australia to look, in detail,
at early stage lung adenocarcinoma before it has spread to lymph nodes or the rest of the
body. The study has found that early cancer is often different to advanced cancer in its
genetic makeup and should be tested and treated accordingly, increasing the chance of
curing the cancer for individual patients.
“It’s a very exciting time to be in this area of medicine, particularly for melanoma, lung,
colon and breast cancer. Mutation testing is completely revolutionizing the way in which we
look at cancer and, most importantly, how patients are treated,” explains Prof O’Toole.
Mutation testing and personalised treatment developed when scientists noticed that in
certain types of cancer there are changes to genes that cancers depend on in order to
survive and grow. Over the past two or three years, there has been a much greater
understanding of the gene changes within cancer cells, and how to target those changes.
“What we do with mutation testing is look for the specific gene or genes that the cancer
relies on and use targeted treatments to shut them down. As a result, we are currently
seeing stunning results for some cancer patients, although many patients eventually become
resistant to the new treatment. We have shown that over 50% of patients with early stage
lung adenocarcinoma cancer have a biologically relevant and potentially targetable
mutation,” says Prof O’Toole.
“Our report provides compelling evidence for comprehensive tumor mutation profiling as an
essential element of clinical trial design for early stage lung cancer, as data from patients
with widely metastatic cancer does not necessarily match data from early stage diseases.
Intriguingly, we found that nearly 10% of patients’ tumors had more than one mutation,
which could potentially affect the positive response to targeted therapeutics for cancer
patients with early stage disease, and these changes would be missed using current standard
mutation testing looking at a single gene only,” says O’Toole.
“Put simply, the correct personalised treatment can extend the life expectancy of some
cancer sufferers. I would estimate that around 10-15% of all patients with lung cancer could
see dramatic results in response to these drugs. Although not without side effects,
personalised treatment offers a major improvement from non-targeted chemotherapy, as it
targets the specific gene as opposed to the body’s entire system,” says O’Toole.
“It’s essential that patients have timely access to this type of personalised treatment for
cancer. The only way to ensure this happens is to put mutation testing in cancer as a top
priority for funding. At present only limited funding for a few single gene tests is available
through Medicare which may result in patients paying large amounts of money to access
these highly effective new treatments,” says O’Toole.
A/Prof Sandra O’Toole will be speaking about mutation testing in cancer at Pathology
Update, hosted by the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia, at Melbourne Convention
Centre on 22-24 February 2013.
ENDS
About the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia:
The RCPA is the leading organisation representing pathologists in Australasia. Its mission is
to train and support pathologists and to improve the use of pathology testing to achieve
better healthcare.
For more information please visit: http://www.rcpa.edu.au/Publications
Media enquiries:
Dr Debra Graves
CEO – RCPA
0417 218 528
debrag@rcpa.edu.au
or
Linsey Brown
S2i Communications
0425 514 005
Linsey@s2i.com.au