By
Cancer Council NSW
Professor John Rasko AO is aiming to improve pancreatic cancer survival.
By
Cancer Council NSW
In Australia, only around 10% of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer survive for five years or more – and this rate has barely improved in the past few decades.
Professor Rasko is trying to change this by researching a new treatment called CAR T-cell immunotherapy. This type of treatment involves taking a patients own immune cells, reprogramming them so they attack only cancer cells, and then returning them to the patient to seek out and destroy the cancer.
CAR T-cell immunotherapy is so exciting because it’s already proving incredibly successful at treating some blood cancers. Around 80% of patients with advanced acute lymphoblastic leukaemia respond to treatment and remain disease-free after a single injection of CAR t-cells. If Professor Rasko is able to translate these results to a solid cancer like pancreatic cancer, it would bring hope to thousands of people every year.
Clearly, it is important that we continue funding research like Professor Raskos to find effective treatments for low survival cancers like pancreatic cancer. So, we’re asking you, the POSH community, to help us continue to fund this $2,000,000 research project, led by Professor Rasko to change the face of cancer treatment as we know it today.
Help us continue to fund vital research like Professor Rasko’s by supporting POSH 2020. You can do this by making a FRIENDS donation or placing a bid in our online auction.
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