When Sarah Fennelly began her pursuit of the Master of Cancer Sciences, her goal was to help cancer patients achieve better outcomes and quality of life. Her capstone project has taken an idea from academic literature and brought it into a real-world context, where it can impact a patient’s treatment and experience.
Previous research has shown that giving a short course of hormone blocking drugs to some patients with breast cancer before surgical removal can cause a reduction in Ki67, a marker of disease aggressiveness. Patients who see a reduction in this marker after hormone blocker therapy can safely be given hormone blocker therapy alone to prevent recurrence of their cancer, while patients who do not see a reduction are likely to need chemotherapy. Patients who respond to hormone blocker therapy may avoid chemotherapy and its potentially harmful side effects.
Sarah’s research paper describes how this treatment was implemented in a Melbourne breast cancer unit and identifies some barriers that arose in the process. Early results indicate that:
Sarah’s paper shows that this treatment can easily be implemented in breast cancer units. By identifying patients who do not need chemotherapy, they can be spared from what could be lifelong side effects. Previously, the best way to predict this was with the Oncotype DX genetic test, which costs over $2,000 and takes four to six weeks to carry out. A short course of hormone blocker drugs takes only around three weeks, is readily accessible and costs about $25.
While larger studies are required to further validate this approach, it shows exciting potential for breast cancer patients, as well as time and cost efficiencies for the health system.
"This project asks a clinically extremely relevant question linking large international clinical trial with real world practice in a single academic center. It latches on an opportunity provided by new policy change in beast MDM after release of new clinical trial data. It provides thought provoking revelations about implications of academic research in clinics and also explores barriers to adoption. Sarah has worked diligently to gather, synthesize and analyse a dataset that has potential to become a significant repository if continued further."
– A/Prof Bhaumik Shah, Internal Supervisor
Congratulations to Sarah, as well as her Master of Cancer of Sciences mentors and advisors. We will watch with interest to see what happens next.
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