The Morrison Government is investing $5 million in an Australian first genomics project to support personalised treatments for patients with lung cancer.
The ground-breaking 'ASPiRATION' project is a genomic profiling research project for 1,000 Australians with newly diagnosed metastatic, non-squamous, non-small cell lung cancer.
The study is jointly funded by the Federal Government through the $20 billion Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) and by the biopharmaceutical company, Roche.
Each patient will have their particular disease individually tested in a process known as comprehensive genomic profiling.
This information will then be used to improve and optimise treatment decisions by identifying the right treatment for the right patient, at the right time.
Patients participate in clinical trials for substantially life-prolonging targeted therapies. Targeted therapies reduce side effects, avoid unnecessary treatments and offer new hope.
It will also serve as a blueprint for how precision medicine, enabled by genomics, can become a standard of care in treating lung cancer in Australia.
Precision medicine has the potential to rival penicillin as a real transformation in medical treatment.
The ASPiRATION study will commence enrollment from July 2020.
It will be conducted by the Australian Genomic Cancer Medicine Centre, the Australasian Lung Cancer Trials Group and the National Health and Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Centre.
In 2019, it was estimated more than 12,800 new cases of lung cancer were diagnosed in Australia, and the estimated number of deaths from lung cancer was more than 9,000.
The MRFF aims to transform health and medical research and innovation to improve lives, build the economy and contribute to health system sustainability.
