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Precision Oncology Ireland: Irish university, cancer charity and industry sectors join forces to improve cancer patient outcomes
For the first time ever, Ireland’s six main cancer charities have come together with government and industry to help fund a joint university precision medicine programme. Professor Mark Tangney, Principal Investigator in Cancer Research @UCC, explains why.
Hippocrates advocated a concept of ‘Treat the patient, not just the disease’. Precision (or ‘personalised’) medicine uses data about a person’s genes (genomics), along with additional information on their cancer, to understand the unique pathways of a disease or treatment response in that person. With this new science, doctors can prescribe the right treatment in a timely fashion, saving the wasted resources and time our current ‘trial and error’ method incurs, while greatly improving response rates.
In Ireland, more than 40,000 people are diagnosed with cancer each year. Precision approaches to oncology give hope of improving cancer patient response rates and survival, reducing side effects from therapy, and shortening hospital stays, balancing out any increased cost to the healthcare system. The National Cancer Strategy (2017-2026) called for the introduction of precision diagnostics and therapeutics into front line cancer care.
Genomics is a rapidly evolving technology that can help identify the genetic cause of a condition in a person. When science first sequenced all the genes in the entire human genome, it became possible for scientists to compare the genomic patterns of larger groups of people – looking for more clues to health and disease in the ‘big data’.
Recently, Irish university, cancer charity and industry sectors are combining forces to improve cancer patient outcomes in a €12 million research collaboration in the field of precision oncology. ‘Precision Oncology Ireland’ is aiming to develop new diagnostics and therapeutics for the personalised treatment of cancer. This programme will accelerate the development of new diagnostics and therapies for cancer, and allow these advances to reach cancer patients in Ireland earlier. The group will involve patients in this work from the beginning, to ensure that their voice is heard in determining the most relevant research priorities. UCC is combining its expertise with other universities and as the Director of the programme, Professor Walter Kolch from University College Dublin, has stated we believe that this unique consortium lays out the blueprint for how cancer research and cancer care will look in Ireland in the 21st century.
A significant proportion of funding for this pioneering project is down to the generosity of the Irish public in donating and fundraising, via the participation of six of the leading cancer charities in Ireland, including my charity partner Breakthrough Cancer Research. This is a historic step in recognition of the potential of this cancer research. This is the first time that researchers, charities and industry have combined forces in this way, and may be a blueprint for future medical research.
While precision oncology is likely to be how cancer care will look in Ireland in the 21st century, it will require coordinated research efforts to generate biological ‘maps’ of patients, so that researchers can link how different cancers grow and respond to different treatments. The more patients and cancer types studied, the more data that can be combined and processed using new computing technology. While significant work and funding is required to gather sufficient information, it will enable researchers to learn what is required for clinicians to detect cancer sooner, and precisely target cancer progression, earlier, leading to better responses to treatment, while avoiding harm to patients.
Precision Oncology Ireland is a consortium of five Irish universities including UCC, six Irish cancer research charities, and ten companies and is supported by Science Foundation Ireland.
For more on this story contact:
precisiononcology.ie/research/researchareas/precisiondiagnostics/p11/