Patients and doctors call for Australia to increase theranostics cancer treatment capability as demand grows

When Lynda Dunstone was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer she was given six months to live. A new treatment discovered she was wrongly diagnosed and ‘saved her life’ – now she wants it accessible to save thousands more Australians.

Tens of thousands of Australian lives could be saved over the next decade if the country builds the medical infrastructure needed for the “new era of cancer treatment,” patients and doctors claim.

Precision medicine or ‘theranostics’ uses nuclear medicine to see and target cancer by attaching radioactive isotopes to the cancer cells, leaving healthy cells alone.

The medicine has the potential to be more accurate, quicker, safer, and less traumatic than traditional cancer treatments. But it typically needs to be administered within 24 hours of being manufactured, meaning Australia needs its own homegrown supply.

With more than 160,000 Australians diagnosed with cancer each year and only one nuclear medical manufacturing plant supporting supply across the country – located at Lucas Heights in Sydney – calls are mounting for the creation of a $500m Nuclear Medicine Fund to build up Australia’s capability and meet growing demand.

Lynda Dunstone, 62, said she “would not be alive” without theranostics and other lives would be lost if the medicine was not made more accessible.

Lynda Dunstone moved to Melbourne to be able to access regulator theranostics treatment. Picture: David Caird

Ms Dunstone was wrongly diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2012 and told she had four to six months to live.

She was started on palliative chemotherapy right away, alongside a daily trial drug costing her $3000 a month, until the cost was waived on “compassionate grounds if you were still alive”.

But when Ms Dunstone lived for another 15 months and doctors could not pinpoint her cancer, Ms Dunstone travelled to Melbourne to undergo nuclear medical imaging – after hearing it was the “gold standard” for cancer diagnosis.

ANSTO Health facility in Lucas Heights near southern Sydney is the only manufacturing plant in the country. Picture Craig Greenhill

The results correctly identified she had neuroendocrine cancer, and despite the tumours multiplying in the two years since her misdiagnosis, Ms Dunstone said theranostics “saved my life”.

“It’s given me my life back. I can now plan for the future and what I’m going to do, rather than thinking I’m going to die next week,” she said.

“I’m fortunate that I’m able to get (frequent) theranostics scans but there’s a lot of people in Australia that just don’t get the option to go and have it done.”

A new report from Telix Pharmaceuticals made five recommendations for regulators and governments to expand theranostics research and manufacturing, with the medicine currently used to treat prostate, neuroendocrine, thyroid, childhood cancer and leukaemia.

Telix Group chief medical officer Dr David Cade said Australia was “on the cusp of one of the most exciting and hopeful periods for cancer treatment in history” but would miss out if local medical infrastructure was not built.

“With the increase in diagnoses across all these disease areas, upscaling our capability is crucial,” Mr Cade said.