At a conference in Australia on 17th of November, cancer experts were told that the country’s ability to achieve new information in genomics is under threat, due to an outdated health system that can’t keep up with the rate of genomic discovery.

Dr. David Thomas, from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Center in Melbounre, explained that governments needed to urgently re-evaluate the way in which “radically advanced information” was being applied in a health system that was three decades old and in desperate need of modernization.

At the Clinical Oncological Society of Australia’s Annual Scientific Meeting, Dr. Thomas said treatment for cancer has been revolutionized by the capacity to decode the cancer genome quickly and affordably, in addition to being able to identify the presence of gene mutations that predicted how individuals would respond to targeted treatments.

Dr. Thomas explained:

“This quantum leap in knowledge has fundamentally changed the paradigm of cancer care, with ramifications for the entire health system. Obstacles to progress are no longer biotechnological, but relate to our restricted capacity to assess and make use of the knowledge.

We need systemic change to create a system that can evolve as rapidly as genomic development so that new research can be integrated more quickly into clinical care.”

As an example of how the present health system couldn’t cope, Dr. Thomas referred to expected growth in clinical trials participation.

Dr. Thomas said:

“Average participation in a clinical trial is currently 5%. But given the acceleration in knowledge and drug development, the majority of cancer patients will soon be accessing new drugs via clinical trials, because regulatory systems aren’t keeping pace.”

According to Dr. Thomas, the necessary alterations had economic, political and social consequences. Interactions between, the government, ethics committees, pharmaceutical companies, regulatory bodies, research funding bodies and the public need to be renewed. Furthermore, the economic implications of the increase of recently available therapies needed to be analyzed.

Dr. Thomas explained:

“Given that genetics play a role in many parts of a cancer patient’s journey – from risk identification and screening, to diagnosis and therapy – keeping up with the genomic revolution is vital to the future of cancer care.

The most important factor is time. With around 300 Australians a day diagnosed with cancer, the pace of genomic discovery is now threatening to outpace our ability to exploit new knowledge, and its costing time that cancer patients do not have.”

Written by Grace Rattue