Philanthropist Kay van Norton Poche’s $20m parting gift a lifesaver for cancer patients

Cancer patients will have dramatically expanded access to groundbreaking clinical trials across Australia as a result of an extraordinary bequest by a wealthy benefactor couple.

Kay van Norton Poche and husband Greg Poche.

Cancer patients will have dramatically expanded access to clinical trials as a result of an extraordinary gift by a wealthy benefactor couple which will for the first time enable access to lifesaving drugs for some of the most disadvantaged people in the nation.

A $20m donation from Kay van Norton Poche, who died of a rare cancer in June, and her husband Greg Poche, to the American-born philanthropist’s Sydney oncologist has enabled the creation of a nationwide clinical trials hub to be based in Sydney and connected to hospitals nationwide. The clinical trials site has also entered a partnership with the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York, meaning cancer patients across Australia will get the same access to clinical trials as citizens in that city.

The new Australian trial site, named North Sydney Trials and Research Van Norton Poche (NORTH STAR VNP) will be launched by Governor-General Sam Mostyn on Saturday.

NORTH STAR will be located across the Sydney North Health Precinct, which includes Royal North Shore and North Shore Private hospitals and will be available to all Australians within regional NSW hospital partnerships ­already established, and plans to expand nationwide, especially to Indigenous people.

Currently, patients get access to clinical trials only if their doctor happens to know about them and they are accepted by a drug company. Most patients in regional, rural and remote Australia are currently frequently unable to ­access the trials at all, even though trial drugs are often the last resort to extend or save a patient’s life.

It was the dying wish of Ms van Norton Poche that there be equitable access for cancer patients in Australia to clinical trials. She had grown up in poverty in a small town in upstate New York before marrying her husband, who founded the freight company Star Track Express and sold it in 2003 for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Rebecca Talbot with her children Jack, 14, Olivia, 8, and Riley, 17, at home on the Gold Coast

Her oncologist, and NORTH STAR medical director, Stephen Clarke said of the donation: “We were just gobsmacked.

“She wanted it to be reflective of the fact that she’d come from a poor background and a rural background. She particularly wanted all cancer patients who needed it to be able to access clinical trials.”

US ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy visited Ms van Norton Poche and her husband when her compatriot was ill and knew how important cancer clinical trials were to them “I was inspired by their courage and their commitment to others,” she said.

Northern Sydney Local Health District chair of research Bruce Robinson said over the past six months the best and brightest minds in oncology, cancer research and science has been working together to bring Kay and Greg’s vision to life. “It’s a huge boon for Australian patients, because they’re going to get access to drugs that they wouldn’t have a snowflake’s chance in hell of getting access to otherwise,” he said.

Professor Bruce Robinson in Sydney: ‘It’s a huge boon for Australian patients’. Picture: John Feder

One of the patients who knows what it is like to be locked out from clinical trials as a regional patient is Gold Coast mother of three Rebecca Talbot, who is living with a rare thyroid cancer. She had to carry out her own investigations on Facebook in order to find an oncologist who could link her with a clinical trial in Sydney. “Getting onto a clinical trial has changed my life in a big way. It has definitely prolonged my life,” she said.

Australians can build upon the legacy of the van Norton Poche family and help to create a future without cancer by supporting the NORTH Foundation today by visiting northfoundation.org.au