Roche Australia, in partnership with the federal government, will jointly fund a new clinical program, ‘ASPiRATION’, to assess the impact of personalised healthcare in lung cancer.
This will potentially transform the way cancer care is administered in Australia.
Study activities will be overseen and implemented by the Australasian Lung Cancer Trials Group (ALTG), the Australian Genomic Cancer Medicine Centre (AGCMC), and the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre (CTC).
The government will commit $5 million towards the study through the Medical Research Future Fund, while Roche will contribute $6.74 million.
ASPiRATION is aimed at generating high quality, real world, clinical and medical data about the impact and value of comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP), precision medicine and personalised healthcare.
“CGP – when implemented at scale along with tools and processes to support personalised care plans, rapid access to innovative medicines, and systematic tracking of clinic-genomic data – enables the promise of truly personalised healthcare by identifying the right treatment for the right patient, at the right time,” said Ron Park, Vice President and Global Lead of Personalised Healthcare, Global Product Strategy at Roche.
Lung cancer is the fifth most diagnosed cancer and the leading cause of cancer death in Australia.
“There’s a clear need for better management of advanced lung cancer to improve survival outcomes for Australian patients,” ALTG President Associate Professor Nick Pavlakis said.
“Clinical practice is shifting towards precision medicine becoming the standard in cancer care, where treatment can be personalised to the unique genomic profile of a patient’s tumour.”
Through CGP, clinicians could find numerous different pathways for how to treat their cancer patients. Yet, access to CGP for Australian cancer patients is limited.
AGCMC CEO Professor David Thomas says the five-way partnership “provides a unique platform to translate clinic research into practice and enables the collection of real-world data that can be used to inform treatment decisions and improve cancer care in Australia”.
