CF25 | Session 2: Panel discussion: Ready or not, the cancer care revolution is here

We’re joined here by leaders in their fields who are working at the frontier of cancer care. We have Professor David Thomas, Director of the Centre for Molecular Oncology at the University of New South Wales, and Chief Science and Strategy Officer at Omico. As a clinician-scientist, his focus is on the application of genomic technologies to understanding and managing cancer, particularly sarcoma. Associate Professor Seth Cheetham is Group leader and Australian Research Council Fellow at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology at the University of Queensland, and Deputy Director of the BASE mRNA facility. He was recently awarded a 3.3-million-dollar grant to establish Australia’s first centre for personalised mRNA cancer vaccines. Associate Professor Rachel Conyers is Clinical Lead of Bone Marrow Transplantation at The Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne, and Group Leader of Cancer Therapies at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. She has specialist training in childhood leukaemia, lymphoma and bone marrow transplantation, and a keen interest in pharmacogenomics. Dr Deme Karikios is a medical oncologist and Head of Department at Nepean Hospital in Sydney, with clinical and research interests in thoracic and gastrointestinal malignancies. He has a research interest in cost and value of anti-cancer drugs, decisions about treatment with anti-cancer drugs that are not subsidised, and financial toxicity. He also has an interest in cancer care policy and is a past chair of the Medical Oncology Group of Australia. We know that decisions about treatment are deeply personal. In RCA’s Cancer Lived Experience Survey, almost half of respondents - forty-five per cent - said achieving survival or a cure was most important to them during their initial cancer treatment. But for a further one in four, maintaining quality of life was most important, including managing side effects, pain and physical changes. When people chose not to proceed with a recommended treatment, their reasoning also varied. Half of those who declined a treatment said they were concerned about side effects, 44 per cent said they declined treatment that would not improve their survival, 13 per cent said the treatment would impact their time spent with family and friends, and 8 per cent said they did not proceed because of the cost. But sometimes what a person wants, or what’s important to them, does not match with what’s available. Our panel is here to debate the exciting new - and not so new - cancer therapies and how we can ensure patients who need them can get them, without a crippling price tag.