Jim's week

[JimJimJimJim]

It was great to catch up with members from South-East Queensland and Northern NSW on Saturday, and with Victorian Members on Sunday. It is always great to be able to put a face to a name. Thanks to Nev Black, Paul Hobson and Alan Barlee for organising these meetings, and to the members, and the people who care about them, who came along, some from quite a distance.

 

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I had the opportunity to attend the Theranostics Congress in Melbourne with Alan Barlee and Paul Hobson. 

 

My thanks go to the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia (PCFA), who sponsored a major speaker at the conference. As part of this sponsorship, PCFA was given complementary registrations for the conference, which they passed on to us. 

 

Great to meet  at the conference:

• Wendy Winnall, PCFA's Scientific Writer, who asked if our members would let her know of any topic they would like her to research and write a more detailed article about; and
• Urologist Declan Murphy of the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. Declan and I follow each other on Twitter. He tickled me by saying "First men go to Jim Jim Jim, and then they come to me!"

 

The conference was basically about using radioactive chemicals which will attach to cancer cells. 

• Low level radioactivity is used to show where the cancer cells are. 
• High level radioactivity is used to kill the cancer cells. 

 

Two examples members may be familiar with are:

• PSMA-Gallium-68 scans; and
• PSMA-Lutetium-177 treatment.

Both attach a radioactive load to PSMA, which mostly occurs on prostate cancer cells:

• Gallium-68 has low level radiation, and shows up the  attached prostate cancer cells on PET scans;
• Lutetium-177 has stronger radiation, and kills the attached prostate cancer cells.

 

Quite a number of our members have had PSMA-Gallium-68 scans, and three of our members participate in a trial of Lutetium-177.

 

To see what members have said about these, go to our forums:

forums.jimjimjimjim.com

find the search box near the top right of the page, and enter:

• lutetium; or
• PSMA; or
• gallium.

 

Jim

 

 

 

 

[Paul Edwards]

At the Theranostics Conference there was discussion as to whether the need for large randomised clinical trials was delaying registration of new cancer drugs.  Large clinical trials are expensive and take a long time to complete.  In the meantime access to drugs which show great promise in the clinical setting is denied.

 

The requirement for providing evidence from parallel randomised controlled trials (the “gold standard”) may not be realistic, above all in oncology.  If a randomised controlled trial design has not been undertaken, should evidence from the ‘next best’ possible trial design be accepted and provide guidance for facilitating access?

 

Several speakers pointed out that no randomised controlled trial had been conducted for parachute use.  Reference was made to this article in the British Medical Journal: Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitional challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials.