The South Australian Cancer Clinical Research Symposium 2024 discussing the future of cancer treatment and prevention, focussing on equitable access, and local research advancements

The sym­po­sium was offi­cial­ly opened by Dr Robyn Lawrence, Chief Exec­u­tive of the Depart­ment for Health and Well­be­ing. Pro­fes­sor Marc Peeters, CEO of the Antwerp Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tal, began the first ses­sion, shar­ing insights from the Bel­gium Com­pre­hen­sive Can­cer Cen­tre expe­ri­ence. He empha­sised that patient out­comes are improved by inte­grat­ed care with net­work sites hav­ing shared gov­er­nance, data man­age­ment, qual­i­ty con­trol, coor­di­na­tion of clin­i­cal tri­als and diag­nos­tic platforms. 

This was fol­lowed by Pro­fes­sor Dorothy Keefe’s update on the imple­men­ta­tion of the Aus­tralian Can­cer Plan. Pro­fes­sor Keefe out­lined that key imple­men­ta­tion part­ners, Movem­ber, are work­ing on a nation­al approach to patient report­ed mea­sures, while Can­cer Coun­cil, McGrath and Can­cer Hub are focus­ing on care nav­i­ga­tion. This year, Can­cer Aus­tralia have also under­tak­en sig­nif­i­cant work on First Nations ini­tia­tives, the Genomics Frame­work, the Data Frame­work and the Opti­mal Care Path­ways Frame­work, re-design of the Pri­or­i­ty-Dri­ven Col­lab­o­ra­tive Can­cer Research scheme, as well as estab­lish­ing the Aus­tralian Com­pre­hen­sive Can­cer Network.

Con­tin­u­ing on the theme of how we can bet­ter use data and ana­lyt­ics, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor Johan Ver­jans, Cen­tral Ade­laide Local Health Net­work car­di­ol­o­gist and Deputy Direc­tor of the Aus­tralian Insti­tute for Machine Learn­ing, pro­vid­ed a high­ly engag­ing dis­cus­sion on AI and the future of can­cer med­i­cine. He reviewed how the last decade has been foun­da­tion­al for dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, not­ing that we can soon expect AI to be assist­ing with logis­tics such as sched­ul­ing, billing and dig­i­tal scribes. He sug­gest­ed that the role of AI in diag­no­sis and ther­a­py will take more time, and that we still need to address con­cerns regard­ing qual­i­ty of data, bias, infra­struc­ture, gov­er­nance and trust.

The sec­ond ses­sion focused on ensur­ing that every­one has access to opti­mal can­cer care. This com­menced with Karen Van Gorp (SA Chair, Can­cer Voic­es) describ­ing her own expe­ri­ence with can­cer care and clin­i­cal tri­als. Hear­ing mov­ing can­cer con­sumer expe­ri­ences such as Karen’s rein­forced why we under­take can­cer research. 

Next, Melanie Pox­ton from the Queens­land Region­al Clin­i­cal Tri­al Coor­di­nat­ing Cen­tre described how tele­tri­als are enhanc­ing access to clin­i­cal tri­als for Aus­tralians liv­ing in region­al, rur­al and remote com­mu­ni­ties. A tele­tri­al is a group of clin­i­cal tri­al sites who use telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions to con­duct clin­i­cal tri­als clos­er to where patients live. Queens­land has been the most suc­cess­ful state involved in the Aus­tralian Tele­tri­als Pro­gram, hav­ing launched 42 tele­tri­als with 918 patients active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing. When­ev­er we are open­ing a clin­i­cal tri­al, Melanie encour­aged us to con­sid­er whether it would be fea­si­ble to make this a tele­tri­al. Fur­ther infor­ma­tion for SA is avail­able via the SA Health Tele­tri­als web­page (Tele­tri­als | SA Health) or by email­ing ATP-​SA@​sa.​gov.​au.

Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor Kim Morey and Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor Odette Pear­son, Co-Theme Lead­ers, Abo­rig­i­nal Health Equi­ty, Wardli­par­ing­ga, pro­vid­ed an overview of their impor­tant work on can­cer in Abo­rig­i­nal peo­ple in SA. Last year, their group suc­cess­ful­ly applied for an MRFF grant to improve data col­lec­tion meth­ods to inform the evi­dence base in this area, specif­i­cal­ly look­ing at dri­vers of can­cer inci­dence and out­come dis­par­i­ties, deter­min­ing whether Abo­rig­i­nal peo­ple are receiv­ing best prac­tice can­cer care, eval­u­at­ing the effec­tive­ness of can­cer pre­ven­tion and ear­ly detec­tion strate­gies and under­stand­ing the can­cer sur­vivor­ship expe­ri­ence for Abo­rig­i­nal people.

The Can­cer SCN iden­ti­fied Can­cer Nav­i­ga­tion as being one of the high­est pri­or­i­ties for can­cer care. As a result, the Can­cer SCN and CEIH have sup­port­ed a col­lab­o­ra­tive project with Flinders Uni­ver­si­ty Car­ing Futures Insti­tute (CFI) to devel­op a statewide Can­cer Nav­i­ga­tion Frame­work, which was pre­sent­ed by Dr Fiona Craw­ford-Williams, Deputy Lead of the Can­cer Sur­vivor­ship Pro­gram Research Group at CFI. Can­cer patient nav­i­ga­tion is defined as an indi­vid­u­alised, patient-cen­tred inter­ven­tion that aims to over­come patient and sys­tem bar­ri­ers, help patients access opti­mal can­cer care in a safe and time­ly man­ner and meet patient and fam­i­ly needs through­out the can­cer care con­tin­u­um. Dr Craw­ford-Williams described the exten­sive con­sul­ta­tion and sys­tem­at­ic reviews under­tak­en, which lead to the devel­op­ment of a risk-strat­i­fied mod­el and 11 strate­gies to sup­port can­cer navigation.

Pro­fes­sor Cather­ine Pater­son, Pro­fes­sor of Can­cer Nurs­ing, Can­cer Sur­vivor­ship Pro­gram Flinders Uni­ver­si­ty & Cen­tral Ade­laide Local Health Net­work, pre­sent­ed on Pre­ha­bil­i­ta­tion: Prepar­ing the mind and body for can­cer treat­ments. Pre­ha­bil­i­ta­tion enables peo­ple with can­cer to pre­pare for treat­ment by pro­mot­ing healthy behav­iours and through needs-based holis­tic assess­ment to tar­get inter­ven­tions at the indi­vid­ual lev­el of need. His­tor­i­cal­ly, this has focused on lifestyle (e.g., exer­cise, nutri­tion, men­tal well­be­ing), but there are still gaps in address­ing issues such as health needs assess­ments, inti­ma­cy, stoma care and care nav­i­ga­tion. Ben­e­fits of pre­ha­bil­i­ta­tion include reduced length of stay, enhanced recov­ery fol­low­ing treat­ment, reduced treat­ment com­pli­ca­tions and pro­vid­ing a teach­able moment to enable smok­ing ces­sa­tion / alco­hol reduction.

South Aus­tralian can­cer researchers are con­duct­ing out­stand­ing research across our hos­pi­tals and research insti­tutes. For this year’s sym­po­sium, researchers were invit­ed to sub­mit abstracts, with a prize for the best poster as judged by the Sci­en­tif­ic Organ­is­ing Com­mit­tee and a sec­ond prize judged by the atten­dees. We were delight­ed to receive over 40 high qual­i­ty abstracts, which were pre­sent­ed as posters dur­ing the lunch break. Paul Fly­nn, CEO of The Hos­pi­tal Research Foun­da­tion Group, pre­sent­ed the Best Abstract Award to Dr Ilar­ia Pagani from SAHM­RI for her abstract titled Devel­op­ing a Lin­eage-spe­cif­ic ​‘Traf­fic Light’ Mod­el for pre­dict­ing Treat­ment-Free Remis­sion in Chron­ic Myeloid Leukaemia Patients. Joyce Mugabusha­ka won the People’s Choice Abstract Award for her abstract, Does treat­ment-induced dys­reg­u­la­tion of the gut micro­bio­ta have a causal role in dri­ving late effects in acute lym­phoblas­tic leukaemia survivors? 

For the final ses­sion of the sym­po­sium, sev­er­al of South Australia’s lead­ing can­cer researchers shared some of their cur­rent work. 

• Dr Han­nah Wardill out­lined her excit­ing work on emerg­ing appli­ca­tions for fae­cal micro­bio­ta trans­plant in oncol­o­gy, with poten­tial roles beyond Clostrid­i­um dif­fi­cile erad­i­ca­tion, such as treat­ment of graft ver­sus host dis­ease, tyro­sine kinase-relat­ed diar­rhoea and immunother­a­py-relat­ed colitis. 

• Pro­fes­sor Jor­dan Hans­ford is lead­ing ground-break­ing research into bet­ter treat­ments for brain tumours in chil­dren, aim­ing to achieve bet­ter out­comes with­out the sub­stan­tial long-term bur­dens that come with con­ven­tion­al treat­ments, includ­ing neu­rocog­ni­tive and phys­i­cal disabilities. 

• Pro­fes­sor Daniel Thomas described his group’s efforts to iden­ti­fy pre­ci­sion ther­a­pies for chron­ic myelomono­cyt­ic leukaemia (CMML) and oth­er myeloid malig­nan­cies. While tar­get­ed ther­a­pies have been added to the arma­men­tar­i­um for a num­ber of oth­er haema­to­log­i­cal malig­nan­cies, there is an unmet need for such ther­a­pies in CMML. Pro­fes­sor Thomas’ work on the biol­o­gy of CMML has led to promis­ing tri­als of nov­el agents such as Lenzilumab. 

• Dr Jo Wright togeth­er with the oth­er mem­bers of Pro­fes­sor Susan Woods’ Gut Can­cer Group are explor­ing bet­ter meth­ods for ear­ly detec­tion of col­orec­tal can­cer. They are devel­op­ing a cap­sule which peo­ple could swal­low that con­tains tumour-hom­ing pro­bi­otics. The organ­isms in the pro­bi­otics have been engi­neered to release a metabo­lite in the pres­ence of colon can­cer which could be detect­ed by a blood test. This could be used to screen pop­u­la­tions for col­orec­tal can­cer with­out the need to col­lect a stool sample.