A novel strategy to realize the benefits of precision dosing for high cost anti-cancer drugs

The project undertaken through this Mid-Career Research Fellowship will address an important impasse that currently prevents cancer patients from achieving the maximum benefit from the use of a key class of anti-cancer medicines.

Observational studies consistently show that the benefit achieved by using the class of anti-cancer drugs called kinase inhibitors (KIs) can be dramatically improved, in cases even doubled, by getting the right dose for each patient.

Importantly, however, the evidence that comes from these studies is not strong enough to inform practice, and because of this potential value of ‘precision dosing’ for these drugs continues to go unrealised.

I have already engaged, and secured funding from, leading local and international academic and pharmaceutical industry partners and established a novel, readily actionable strategy (‘ADMExosomes’) to track the impact of variability in drug exposure on the effectiveness and tolerability of a drug.

Through this Mid-Career Research Fellowship I will evaluate the capacity of this strategy to efficiently generate practice changing evidence defining the value of precision dosing for KIs.

Importantly, I have also already established a framework through engagement with my existing network of clinical, consumer and industry collaborators to translate the findings of this project, where appropriate, into actionable ‘companion diagnostics’ that maximise KI effectiveness and tolerability in real world cancer patients.