More funding needs to be devoted to supporting clinical trials of cancer drugs in the Republic if cancer patients here are to have access to the latest treatments available, a consultant oncologist warned yesterday. Eithne Donnellan reports.
Prof John Armstrong, a radiation oncologist at St Luke's Hospital in Dublin, said it takes "a vast amount of infrastructure" to be in a position to run with clinical trials and while the situation has improved significantly here in this regard, there is still some way to go.
"We are on the way, we aren't there yet. We still have deficits but what we are looking for is more funding, obviously, to be in a position to do that," he said.
"At this point in time there are certain categories of cancer that, if people are diagnosed with , they don't have access to a clinical trial in Ireland because it takes a vast amount of infrastructure to be in a position to run with clinical trials."
Prof Armstrong was speaking following a press conference in Dublin at which the results of a recent study which gives new hope to women with breast cancer were again highlighted. The study, details of which were published in December, found that a form of chemotherapy traditionally given to women with late-stage breast cancer could significantly reduce the risk of death if given to women with early-stage disease. Conducted among almost 1,500 patients across 20 countries, it found if Taxotere was given to women with early-stage breast cancer it reduced the risk of death by 30 per cent five years after surgery.
There was also a 28 per cent reduction in the likelihood of their cancer returning compared to women treated with standard chemotherapy after surgery. Some 4.5 years after treatment, 75 per cent of the women who presented with early stage breast cancer were disease-free.
Similar studies involving 370 Irish women have begun, with results published in 2005 or 2006.