Grampians Health at the forefront of cancer research with phase I clinical trials
Victoria’s regional cancer patients are lucky enough to have access to phase I clinical trials, based out of Ballarat.
Grampians Health is the only regional centre running phase I oncology clinical trials for patients, under the care of Medical Oncologist Dr Lizzie Lim and her colleagues.
Dr Lim has been working at the forefront of cancer treatment and research for over seven years. Her speciality is oncology drug development and phase I clinical trials. Dr Lim’s passion for ground-breaking research to help her patients is evident, while currently juggling several open trials.
“Phase one trials are early drug development trials. They are the first in human trials, and so not all of them will make it to the next trial stage. Some may do better than others, some we may find, will not be as effective as we hoped, or some may have issues with side effects,” Dr Lim said.
Phase I clinical trials are the first steps to testing new treatments in humans. These trials test the safety, side effects, best dose, and timing of a new treatment. Phase I clinical trials use a very small group of people for this testing phase and are usually the last line of hope for many patients with cancer.
“Phase I clinical trials are evidence-based, gold-standard in progressing research to improve the outcome of patients. Without them, we can’t have any progress and I believe they should be the standard of care for patients,” Dr Lim said.
Phase I oncology drug development clinical trials are signal seeking trials. This means that the medications being trialled are laying the groundwork for future trials, helping clinicians understand how the medication performs against cancerous cells and how it works with the human body.
Signal seeking is an important part of drug development as it helps to prioritise treatments for the future. Many of these trials test new drugs against any type of solid tumour to see what the tumour’s reaction is to the new medication.
“This is an essential step in drug development to get new drugs and promising treatments for the future, and that first stage is actually dose-finding trials, so finding the right dose and looking for a signal for efficacy from that drug,” said Dr Lim.
As they are not targeting a specific cancer during the trial process, it opens up the new drug to be tested against different cancers to see what the possibility is for future treatments. This gives options for doctors and drug companies to further develop medication in specific areas for specific cancers, depending on the efficacy of the new medication.
While not all new drugs will work against cancers, being able to test new medications and seeing their responses will help researchers in their quest to find new ways to tackle cancer treatment in humans.
“What I enjoy is being at the forefront of oncology drug development and helping contribute to research that can help patients now and, in the future,” Dr Lim said.
