A Newcastle specialist who helped develop a tablet to treat blood cancer is optimistic about a future in which cancer can be treated as a chronic disease.
Dr Anoop Enjeti will be among the speakers at a Hunter Medical Research Institute public event on Tuesday to mark World Cancer Day.
Dr Enjeti, a blood cancer specialist and University of Newcastle associate professor, conducts his work at the Calvary Mater and John Hunter hospitals.
He works to develop new treatments, mainly focused on people in regional and rural areas.
"A lot of people who live in regional Australia have to travel to a referral centre to get treatment for leukemia. They could be spending four to six weeks in hospital with intensive treatments," he said.
One intention of Dr Enjeti's research is to offer such people "less intensive oral therapy that they could potentially have closer to their families and homes".
"We've been part of a global clinical trial. We worked on an oral drug that could be used in an aggressive cancer - acute myeloid leukemia.
"We used a tablet form of treatment for people older than 60, who for various reasons can't have intensive therapy. It proved to be remarkably effective."
The drug is now becoming a standard treatment option, following approval by the US Food and Drug Administration last year.
Dr Enjeti said the drug was a form of "targeted therapy".
"It targets the way cancer cells die. It's not a shotgun approach like chemotherapy, which just kills everything in sight. It specifically targets the cancer cells. It's a drug that can be given orally without the need for intravenous medication.
"It's quite well tolerated and quite a good option for people over 60 who want gentler treatments."
His work also involves diagnostic testing that helps to personalise cancer care for each patient. Instead of treating everybody the same, the testing can be used to inform patients whether one drug will work better than another because of the changes being seen in their cancer cells.
"In Newcastle, we established the first diagnostic testing for blood cancers in NSW in the public hospital system. That's been going on for the last two years."
The public event will be held from 10.30am to 1pm at HMRI at New Lambton Heights.
