The Sunshine Hospital Radiation Therapy Centre has increased its treatment capacity with two new radiotherapy machines.
Cancer patients in the west now have access to the latest technology in radiation cancer treatment.
Today, the Sunshine Hospital Radiation Therapy Centre (SHRTC) facility commenced treatment on two new medical linear accelerator (LINAC) machines, as part of an investment in Melbourne’s west worth more than $6 million.
The Sunshine Hospital Radiation Therapy Centre is a partnership between Western Health and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.
Installation of the Varian Truebeam machines allows for delivery of especially complex treatments, including for small tumours in the brain, and highest dose treatments to other targets in the body. Previously, patients had to travel to Peter Mac’s Parkville campus to receive these treatments.
The new machines are also more efficient, and can treat 10% more patients per year than the older machines.
LINACS use high-energy X-rays or electrons to destroy cancer cells. It is the device most commonly used to deliver radiation treatments to people with cancer.
The first patient to be treated on the new LINACS, Philip Ring, said: “It’s great to have these new machines in Sunshine. I live in St Albans, so it’s easier to be treated at Sunshine Hospital rather than going into the city. Particularly because I’ll be coming in every week day for seven weeks.”
Western Health Chief Executive Russell Harrison said: “We are thrilled that the communities in Melbourne’s western suburbs now have access to these state-of-the-art machines, complementing the cancer care we provide at Western Health. Treatment delivered close to home is so important and offers many benefits to our patients and their families.”
Claire Phillips, Director of Radiation Oncology at Peter Mac, said: “We are always looking to make it easier for patients to access treatment. These new capabilities will make treatment more bearable for a significant number of our patients”.
Peter Mac stands in solidarity with the people of Ukraine and the healthcare workers who are supporting them.
We express our deep concern for the estimated 179,000 newly diagnosed cancer patients* who now face an even more uncertain future with disruptions to treatment posing a grave risk to their survival.
“In the first days after the Russian attack many cancer centres in Kharkiv, Mariupol, Sumy, Chernihiv, and eastern Ukraine had to evacuate their staff as some centres were destroyed by shelling,” the British Medical Journal says.
“Some had to cancel all planned treatment, while clinics in Kyiv, including the National Cancer Institute, have stopped everything but ongoing chemotherapy.”
“Clinics in western Ukraine have suffered no major interruptions yet but are overwhelmed by the flow of patients fleeing the east and experiencing shortages of basic drugs.”
The same is true in neighbouring European countries where clinicians are doing their utmost to help Ukrainian refugees.
No cancer patient should experience the disruption and confusion these patients are facing, as they undergo treatment for their cancer.
We strongly agree with affiliated organisations such as the renowned American Society of Clinical Oncology, which said: “Interruption of life-saving cancer care simply adds to the massive pain and needless suffering caused by war”.
We recognise too that Russian patients, affected by sanctions and inflation, also face an uncertain future for their care.
If you have capacity, you can contribute to Doctors Without Borders or Red Cross who are providing emergency medical care on the ground.
References
*American Cancer Society - https://www.cancer.org/about-us/what-we-do/ukraine-support.html
British Medical Journal - https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o701
American Society of Clinical Oncology - https://www.asco.org/news-initiatives/policy-news-analysis/asco-stands-with-ukrainian-cancer-community
An influential prostate cancer study, co-authored by Peter Mac experts, has been named European Urology’s Best Scientific Paper of 2021.
Published in late 2021, the paper related results of the PRIMARY imaging trial.
PRIMARY investigated whether adding PSMA (prostate-specific membrane antigen) scanning to MRI prior to biopsy could be helpful in the early diagnosis of prostate cancer.
The trial showed improved results, which have now led to the PRIMARY 2 study.
Highly-regarded, European Urology has the highest impact factor of all surgical journals.
PRIMARY was a collaboration between Peter Mac clinicians and researchers Dr James Buteau, Associate Professor Daniel Moon, Dr Omar Alghazo, Professor Nathan Lawrentschuk, Professor Declan Murphy and Professor Michael Hofman, led by Professor Louise Emmett at the Garvan Institute, her colleague Professor Philip Stricker, and other Australian researchers.
291 men took part in the trial, with Peter Mac recruiting the most participants of all contributing centres. Peter Mac’s Associate Professor Daniel Moon recruited almost 100 patients.
The PRIMARY 2 Peter Mac sponsored phase 3 trial is currently recruiting, with a goal of 660 participants. The multicentre, randomised trial is co-ordinated by Peter Mac’s ProsTIC (the Prostate Cancer Theranostics Imaging Centre of Excellence) with funding from the Prostate Cancer Foundation, the Peter MacCallum Foundation and further philanthropic support through Louise Emmett, St Vincent’s NSW.
ProsTIC will host a two-day education event for clinical professionals in Melbourne on Friday 1 April and Saturday 2 April 2022.
The Victorian Cancer Agency has funded four research fellowships at Peter Mac that aim to improve treatment options for patients with lung cancer, lymphoma, women's cancers and solid tumours.
The funded projects will be investigating why some lung cancer patients are resistant to a particular immunotherapy, how women's cancers become resistant to treatment, how to improve CAR T-cell therapy for patients with aggressive lymphoma, and how to engineer CAR T-cells to make them work better against solid tumours.
Funded by the Victorian Government, the VCA invests in projects that rapidly translate research into treatments and approaches that improve clinical practice and care of cancer patients.
Below are summaries of the research projects:
This project aims to see if palliative radiotherapy can improve the immunotherapy sensitivity of lung cancers, and to understand why they become resistant, using two new PET tracers that show if cancer cells take up durvalumab, an immunotherapy that improves survival in lung cancer, and shows where the cancer-killing T-cells are located. It will see if palliative radiotherapy can make immunotherapy work better by increasing the infiltration of T-cells and explore why immunotherapy resistance develops. This study will identify why patients respond to immunotherapy using technology that is non-invasive and allows assessment at multiple time points in a patient's cancer treatment, resulting in safer and more effective immunotherapy treatment.
This projects aims to generate new knowledge of the treatment resistance mechanisms that arise in women with ovarian and endometrial cancer, and identify effective treatments to overcome resistance. Part one of the program involves examining the evolution of tumours to discover resistance mechanisms, and part two involves translational studies to identify treatments and biomarkers. This study is designed to address current gaps in knowledge so that findings can be rapidly translated into the clinic, transforming the clinical management of women's cancers and improve survival outcomes.
Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is an exciting new treatment for patients with blood cancers that uses a patient's own immune cells to attack and destroy cancer. Some patients are cured who previously would have had no good treatment options, however these are in the minority. This clinical trial will test a range of possible additional drugs that are given before, during or after CAR T-cell therapy with the aim of increasing the long-term cure rate of CAR T therapy. Patient samples will be used to better understand the immune response that results in a cure.
CAR T-cell therapy is where a patients' own immune cells are genetically engineered to attack and kill cancer cells. While this therapy works well against blood cancers, it is less effective against solid tumours because of a process called 'exhaustion' that suppresses the CAR T-cell response against the cancer. This research proposal will use cutting-edge genetic engineering to manufacture 'exhaustion-resistant' CAR T-cells to better treat a range of solid tumours, such as breast, lung, ovarian and colon cancer.
The VCA also acknowledged the strength of Dr Pilar Dominguez's application for her project entitled 'Optimising epigenetic therapies in blood cancers', but did not award her funding as she previously received a NHMRC Ideas grants in 2021.
For more information, or to arrange an interview with a VCA Fellowship recipient, contact the Peter Mac Communications team on 0417 123 048.
Photo: Killer T-cells surround a cancer cell. Credit: Alex Ritter, Jennifer Lippincott Schwartz & Gillian Griffiths, National Institutes of Health
Peter Mac's Professor Trevor Leong has been awarded the inaugural NHMRC David Cooper Clinical Trials and Cohort Studies Award for his work leading an international gastric cancer trial.
The award was presented at the NHMRC Research Excellence Awards ceremony held in Canberra overnight.
The TOPGEAR Phase III clinical trial is trying to answer one of the most important questions in gastrointestinal oncology.
"We want to determine what is the best combination of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery to improve cure rates for patients with gastric cancer," Professor Leong says.
"And clinicians across the world are eagerly awaiting our results."
Gastric cancer – which occurs when cancerous cells form in the lining of the stomach – is the second most common cause of cancer-related death globally.
In Australia, 2,000 people are diagnosed with gastric cancer each year. Worldwide it's estimated to be one million people diagnosed annually.
For decades, surgery was the only option available to cure patients with operable gastric cancer. However, five-year survival rates following surgery alone were dismal.
In the early 2000s, chemotherapy and radiotherapy were added to surgery, improving patient cure rates.
Currently, there are two global standards of care for patients undergoing surgery for gastric cancer: one that uses chemotherapy alone, and one that uses both chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
But oncologists are divided as to which approach is the most effective – hence the significance of a large randomised clinical trial like TOPGEAR.
Led by the Australasian Gastro-Intestinal Trials Group (AGITG), of which Professor Leong is a Director, TOPGEAR began recruiting patients in Australia in 2009 before opening to international patients in 2013.
It reached its target of 570 patients successfully enrolled in May 2021.
The trial has established over 70 sites in Europe, North America, New Zealand and Australia in 15 different countries, including collaborations with the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) and the Canadian Cancer Trials Group.
"These collaborations have propelled TOPGEAR to international recognition and will allow this Australian-led trial to set the standard of care and improve treatment outcomes globally," Professor Leong says.
"Even before the trial results become available, TOPGEAR has already provided benefits for patients with gastric cancer by fostering multidisciplinary management, and raising standards for the delivery of surgery and radiation therapy."
The latest NHMRC grant TOPGEAR received is the third the trial has been awarded, and reflects that it is truly interdisciplinary and international and its outcomes will be of global significance, says Professor Leong.
The NHMRC David Cooper Clinical Trials and Cohort Studies Award – previously the NHMRC Clinical Trials and Cohort Studies Award – has been renamed to honour the achievements of the late Australian HIV/AIDS clinical research Professor David Cooper AC.
This award recognises Professor Leong as the highest ranked recipient in the Clinical Trials and Cohort Studies Grant scheme.