'Step forward' for advanced cancer treatment in regional Australia

These tests are used to identify cancer mutations and tailor effective treatment for patients but they require specialist training.

Many specialists are located in major cities and patients outside of metropolitan hubs often lack access to the services.

"Regional Australians are taxpayers and should have the same access and rights to the benefits of the healthcare system, but they don't," Alfred Health director of oncology Mark Shackleton said.

Monash Partners Comprehensive Cancer Consortium (MPCCC) is addressing this "critical gap" by distributing eight highly-skilled clinical oncology and pathology fellows across five leading cancer hospitals in Victoria. These experts will lead the charge in supporting regional doctors .

How has cancer treatment changed?

Professor Shackleton said "a major revolution in the way we diagnose and treat cancer" had unfolded over the course of his career but regional patients often lacked access to these developments.

"One of the major innovations that occurred over the period is our increasing individualisation of cancer care," he said.

"Previously we thought that breast cancer was just cancer and there was only one approach to treating it, which was surgery, radiation and then chemotherapy.

"There was a one-size-fits all approach to care.

"One of the major discoveries of cancer research in recent history has been that that's actually a simplistic way of viewing the disease."

"We're trying to understand in great detail the specific sub-type of cancer a person has, not just defined by the organ where it starts, but by a whole lot of features," he said.

Molecular testing could offer invaluable insights into the cancer subtype and best treatment.

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Professor Shackleton said molecular tests regularly revealed new treatments for cancer.

"The treatments existed but they were not usually linked with that particular cancer," he said.

"This extra detailed molecular testing and sophisticated interpretation of the data is able to make those links between a particular person's subtype of cancer and an available therapy that is not typically considered to be useful in that context."

"This includes, not only established treatments, but often treatments available by clinical trial."

MPCCC's network of oncology specialists is designed to advise clinicians from afar on extra treatment options available for their patients.

There are some treatments that would only be available in a small number of centrally-located facilities because of population density issues, Professor Shackleton said.

"But we're in an era of applying precision medicine where we need to be decentralising as much as possible," he said.