$3.75m awarded to transform the way ovarian cancer is treated

The Cancer Council of NSW has awarded its annual Translational Program Grant to a Sydney-led project aiming to match ovarian cancer patients with the treatment or clinical trial most likely to work for their cancer subtype. Cancer Council has awarded its annual $3.75 million Translational Program Grant to a research team led by Professor Anna deFazio from the University of Sydney, exploring how to better personalise ovarian cancer treatment for Australian women. Professor Anna deFazio and her team will spend the next five years creating a process by which ovarian cancer patients can have their cancer comprehensively analysed to determine its molecular profile. If standard treatments are not effective, patients can be matched with an appropriate clinical trial, based on the individual characteristics of their tumour. This will improve treatment outcomes by ensuring that treatment approaches offered to an ovarian cancer patient are those with the highest likelihood of being successful for their specific subtype of the disease. Professor deFazio, who is the Sydney West Chair in Translational Cancer Research and co-director of the Centre for Cancer Research at the Westmead Institute for Medical Research (WIMR), is hopeful that this research will transform the way women with ovarian cancer are treated. "Many people don't know that ovarian cancer has the lowest survival rate of any women's cancer in Australia," said Professor deFazio, from the University of Sydney School of Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine and Health.