Family donates $5.5m to emerging ‘personalised medicine’

With the support from a very personal pledge of $5.5 million, an unprecedented number of Australian lymphoma patients will now have access to advanced genomic testing of their tumours at Peter Mac, which will lead to more accurate diagnosis and better treatment choices.

The Christine and Bruce Wilson Centre for Lymphoma Genomics represents Victoria’s and Australia’s global leadership in the emerging field of ‘personalised medicine’.

Its establishment will ensure Peter Mac can significantly expand its repertoire, capacity and sophistication of genetic testing to accommodate the needs of lymphoma patients more widely. Up until now, a very small percentage of lymphoma patients have been able to access genomics testing, which has meant many Australians affected by hard-to-treat cancers have not had access to personalised medicine, which matches a treatment to the specific condition for that patient.

This has been made possible by the generosity of Christine Wilson and her family. Wilson has been treated for lymphoma at Peter Mac and says her family felt moved to act after seeing many blood cancer patients not respond well to conventional treatment or relapse much sooner than expected.

Through the Snowdome Foundation, the Wilson family has pledged $5.5 million over four years towards the program of research. “We were struck by how genetics testing can save lives, or improve quality of life, for a group of patients who are in dire need of other treatment options,” Wilson said.

Genomics involves testing the patient’s blood to look for critical gene mutations known to play a role in cancer. If found, the patient can be diverted to a new treatment – or enrolled in a clinical trial – to access drugs known to work against cancers involving these specific mutations. In order to provide this useful information, multiple genes (sometimes as many as 50-100) need to be tested simultaneously using a technique known as “Next Generation Sequencing”. This new approach requires cutting-edge and highly specialised laboratory processes, instrumentation and computing power and is performed by haematologist Dr. Piers Blombery and his team of scientists, technicians and bioinformaticians in the Molecular Haematology Laboratory in the Pathology Department at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.