NSW patients suffering from a rare cancer that killed Apple founder Steve Jobs have won a long-running battle to get funding for a "last-resort" treatment that could extend their lives for years.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
This was despite the government's own expert body, the Agency for Clinical Innovation, recommending the Lutate treatment should be funded for people whose cancers did not respond to conventional treatment.
The founder and chair of patient support group The Unicorn Foundation, John Leyden, said NSW would now lead the way in developing a clinical trial for the treatment.
"Patients will be able to access Lutate earlier in the course of their disease … and they are not going to have to travel to Victoria or anywhere else for treatment," he said.
Rather than being a drug, Lutate uses radioactive particles to kill tumours from the inside out, drastically slowing the progression of the disease in between a third and half of patients who otherwise do not respond to treatment.
It is recommended by the Medical Oncology Group of Australia and the Clinical Oncological Society of Australia for people who do not respond to treatment.
Dr Leyden, an anaesthetist, worked tirelessly to get the drug funded after his sister died of a neuroendocrine tumour.
"She had been given six months to live, and she got this treatment [in Melbourne] and lived another four years," he said.
He was particularly thankful to NSW Premier Mike Baird, who he felt had been supportive despite health authorities resisting funding it.
Chief cancer officer and chief executive of the Cancer Institute NSW, David Currow, said Lutate was not a registered treatment here or overseas, and it would be challenging to collect the needed evidence about it.
But NSW would lead a trial into the drug, and when the best time in a patient's illness was to begin administering it.
"All patients in NSW patients can be assured that their wellbeing is central to the clinical selection criteria for Lutate therapy," he said.
The first 50 patients to be enrolled will be treated at St George Hospital, with further patients to be treated at Royal North Shore.
