AN international trial that aims to optimise treatment and improve stomach cancer cure rates has earned the president of Hunter-based TROG Cancer Research a prestigious award.
Consultant radiation oncologist Professor Trevor Leong said it was a "surprise" to be awarded the National Health and Medical Research Council's inaugural David Cooper Clinical Trials and Cohort Studies Award - named in honour of the late HIV/AIDS researcher Professor Cooper - which recognised the highest ranked recipient in the Clinical Trials and Cohort Studies Grant Scheme in 2020.
"This grant round the success rate was only 6.9 per cent, so it's extremely competitive - just to receive a grant is like winning Lotto," Professor Leong said.
"To also receive the award for the top ranked application - I thought 'My goodness, it's not bad'! I still don't think it's really sunk in.
"It was an extremely humbling experience and a surprise."
Professor Leong said the $700,000 grant was the third from the NHMRC for the randomised trial.
The two previous grants totalling about $2.8 million were for development and recruitment, while the most recent one was for follow up and analysis. He said there were two standards of care for gastric cancer, using chemotherapy and surgery, and using chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery.
"[This trial is] really trying to find the best combination of those three treatments to treat gastric cancer," he said.
"No-one knows which way was the best. What we did was we thought 'Why pick one or the other, why not pick the best bits of both treatments, combine them into a new treatment given in a different way' and we think this will be better than either of those treatments and that's what we tested.
"This is using all three treatments but it's also giving all the treatment before surgery rather than after surgery because when you give it after surgery patients just do not tolerate treatment, they never finish it... we think this will be better than all the previous treatments but the only way we can prove it is by doing this randomised trial.
"Even before our trial results - we're not going to know the outcome for a couple of years in terms of how it improves cure rates - but we've already shown that patients tolerate it, the completion rates when we give it before surgery are about 90 per cent as opposed to 50 per cent when you give it after... in a proportion of patients the tumour will completely vanish."
The trial began in 2009, opened to patients in 2013 and now involves almost 600 in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and 12 European countries.
Professor Leong said it was unique because it was Australian led, not industry sponsored and had received multiple NHMRC grants.
"In the oncology world there's not always a lot of collaboration between medical oncology, radiation oncology and surgical oncology, we all to some extent work separately... [this has] already benefited patients because it really has brought the three disciplines together, patients with gastric cancer now get much better coordinated and collaborative treatment because of trials like this."
The trial was a joint effort between TROG Cancer Research, the Australasian Gastro-Intestinal Trials Group, the NHMRC Clinical Trial Centre, the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer and the Canadian Cancer Trials Group.
"The ultimate aim of the trial is so this new treatment we've come up with will improve the cure rates for patients with gastric cancer. People will live longer and they'll be cured."
