Donor Funding: $300,000
Cancer Type: All Cancers
Cancer Stage: Treatment
Funded in: 2020, 2021
Dr Stephanie Reuter Lange
University of South Australia
Whilst there has been substantial improvements in the treatment of cancer, it remains that 3 out of 10 patients will not survive longer than 5 years, a result of either cancer progression or death from severe treatment-related side effects.
Cancer medicines must be administered at a dose that is enough to treat the cancer, but not too much to cause toxic side effects. While this is well known, most cancer treatments are given as a “one-size-fits-all” amount. Given the large variability in response seen with many cancer medicines, this means that for the same dose some patients are likely to be under-treated and others a likely to be over-treated.
The concept of dose individualisation is tailoring the amount of drug administered to each individual patient to maximise tumour response and minimise side effects. This fellowship program will use computer-based modelling methods to identify dose individualisation strategies for best treatment practice.
This will be conducted for a range of diverse projects that will illustrate the value in this approach to cancer treatment and provide a framework for determining the best use of new and existing cancer medicines.