Improving outcomes for cancer patients

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New Zealand cancer patients will have greater access to new treatments via clinical trials thanks to a $1.4 million donation towards a new research unit.

The unit will be part of an Integrated Cancer Centre which is a joint initiative between the University of Auckland and the Auckland District Health Board's Regional Cancer and Blood Service and involves oncology clinicians and researchers working at Auckland City Hospital.

The anonymous donation will establish the country's first specialist oncology phase one clinical trials research unit and contributes to the university's fundraising to the ‘For all our futures' campaign.

The research unit will be managed by a team from the university, and will be one of the first major projects in its Auckland Academic Health Alliance towards setting up the integrated centre.

'This is a significant and generous donation to establish a unit intended to improve outcomes for cancer patients in New Zealand, enabling greater access to new treatments through clinical trials,” says University of Auckland Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences dean Professor John Fraser.

'The Centre will bring a unique and exciting opportunity to truly integrate translational and clinical research programmes to improve patient outcomes.”

The three key platforms for the integrated Centre are a tumour tissue bank, a consolidated genomics research platform, and the purpose-built clinical trials research Unit.

Cancer phase one clinical studies include those that are for the first time giving a drug to a patient, which are called First in Human studies. They involve the administration of small, but cautiously escalating doses of a drug in carefully monitored patients.

Once its dose has been established as optimal the drug gets further tested in phase two and three studies in larger numbers of patients.

Phase one studies require a higher level of expertise as well as more rigorous oversight and monitoring compared to later stage human trial research.

ADHB Cancer and Blood Service director and oncologist Dr Richard Sullivan says the service and the university want to open a research unit with the specialist infrastructure and governance framework to be able to safely deliver First-in-Human studies.

'Such a unit will be designed and run to the highest possible standards expected of accredited Phase One units elsewhere globally. This also provides an excellent framework on which to launch new research in the pursuit of the delivery of personalised medicine.”

The phase one trials are delivered by Clinical Research Coordinators and Research Nurses overseen by Principal Investigators with governance oversight provided by the Research Management team.

Patients in phase one and later phase studies will likely have their tumour and other samples collected and stored through the tissue bank facility and analysed using the genomics platform.

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