Photo: Paul Jeffers

Minister for Health Jill Hennessy today announced $20 million over four years for the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre (VCCC) alliance to deliver new clinical trials for cancer patients, as well as an additional $12.2 million to support cancer research projects through the latest Victorian Cancer Agency funding round.

The VCCC alliance brings together the work of 10 leading Melbourne-based institutions to accelerate the control and cure of cancer. A key part of this work is ground-breaking clinical trials.

Clinical trials are vital for advancing cancer breakthroughs by testing the latest treatments, drugs and medical devices that can deliver even better patient outcomes and save lives.

The Labor Government’s new funding boost will ensure more cancer patients can take part in the trials, including those living in rural and regional Victoria.

The Victorian Cancer Agency grants complement this investment by fast-tracking the conversion of research into clinical practice and new treatments that deliver better cancer care.

The latest grants continue this work with new projects focusing on lung cancer, ovarian and other rare cancers, head and neck cancer, prostate cancer, triple negative breast cancer, colorectal and pancreatic cancer, advanced melanoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and acute myeloid leukaemia.

It also includes the first ever Allied Health and Nursing Clinical Research Fellowship that will see a new project investigating how exercise can improve quality of life for lung cancer survivors.

More Victorians than ever before are surviving cancer, with the five-year survival rate for cancer increasing from 47 per cent in 1985 to 67 per cent in 2014.

This is testament to ongoing investment in cancer prevention, treatment and research in Victoria but we know we need to do more to continue to save more lives – in 2015, 31,628 Victorians were diagnosed with cancer and 10,937 died from the disease – this is still too many.

Through our Victorian Cancer Plan 2016-20 we’re working hard to turn this around, setting an ambitious target of saving 10,000 lives from cancer in the next 10 years.