[Dr Ross Jennens]
I look after medical treatments for people who are diagnosed with cancer.
I look after a number of different types of cancer, breast cancers, lung cancers, brain tumours, for example, and day to day treatments.
So people that are needing medical therapies like chemotherapy treatments or for breast cancer medication treatments like anti hormone treatments. There's also a lot of new exciting treatments coming through as well, what we call targeted therapies that are specifically against a particular protein or change within a patient's tumour.
And there are also some new immune therapies that are starting to come through.
When I started out, there was only a handful of different chemotherapy medications that were used, and now there's literally hundreds of different types of treatments and every year new treatments coming out.
So it's something that is very exciting and always having to keep on top of all these new changes. Clinical trials have given us the advances over the decades to improve those outcomes so that there are more and more people cured from cancer.
I'm involved with quite a number of clinical trials at the various hospitals that I work at. So, I keep on top of what trials are available at present. I always offer a clinical trial to a patient if there's a suitable trial available either at my centre or one of the other centres, that would be convenient to attend because I think clinical trials provide patients with the best options.
Sometimes on trials, patients may get a standard therapy, but they might get a new therapy.
So it's not only hopefully helping themselves, but also helping other people in the future.
With a clinical trial, there's a detailed consent form which is often many pages going through the logistics of why the trials are being done, what's involved, what medications are, what the side effects are, how many visits and appointments will be required, all of those sorts of things.
Well, if we didn't have clinical trials, our treatments would be exactly the same as they were 50 years ago, and that was pretty dismal. Mortality rates from cancer were very high.
Very few people were cured from cancer unless it was diagnosed early and they had it removed with an operation.
The most exciting thing in oncology at the moment are some of the new immune therapies that are starting to come through. And those initial trials have been done in patients with melanoma that spread to other parts of the body. And those trials have shown for a disease which ten years ago we really had very little in the way of effective treatments.
Some of these patients are now having fantastic responses to immune therapies and some of these patients have potentially been cured from melanoma that's already spread through the body. These trials do tend to involve a lot more work.
There's a lot of paperwork in trials, a lot of extra time that's required in clinical trials, a very labour intensive both for me and for the trial staff, but because they are the only way that we can make advances with cancer treatments, I do think they're very important and I encourage colleagues to either be involved in clinical trials or if they don't have the time to at least consider the trials that are available at other centres around town to refer patients who may be suitable for the clinical trials.
It's not just those patients on trials, but it's patients being treated in a centre, that performs clinical trials. Because clinical trials have a very rigorous protocol that needs to be followed that then flows on to the rest of the treating community. The only way to know is this medication actually better than a standard medication.
Is it a safe medication? Are the side effects we have minimal or reasonable is to do a clinical trial and compare it with our standard treatment. And if that trial shows, yes, this treatment's better, well then that will become available to everyone.
When I started out, there were only a handful of different chemotherapy medications that were used but now there are literally hundreds of different types of treatments and every year new treatments are coming out. Targeted therapies, that are specifically against a particular protein or change within a patient's tumour, and some new immune therapies that are starting to come through.
The most exciting thing in oncology at the moment is some of the new immune therapies. Those initial trials have been done in patients with melanoma that has spread to other parts of the body. Those trials have shown that for a disease for which ten years ago we really had very little in the way of effective treatments, some of the patients are now having fantastic responses to immune therapies, and some of these patients are potentially being cured from melanoma that had already spread through their body.
The only way to know, ‘Is this medication actually better than our standard medication? Is it a safe medication? Are the side effects minimal or reasonable?’ is to do a clinical trial and compare it with our standard treatment. If that trial shows that, ‘Yes. This treatment's better,’ then that will become the new standard therapy.
If we didn't have clinical trials, our treatments would be exactly the same as they were fifty years ago, and that was pretty dismal. Mortality rates from cancer were very high. Very few people were cured from cancer unless it was diagnosed early and they had it removed with an operation.
I always offer a clinical trial to a patient if there's a suitable trial available, either at my centre or one of the other centres that would be convenient to attend, because I think clinical trials provide patients with the best options.