World Cancer Day 2021

Monday Lunch Livestream

Six weeks with my biopsy - A story of cancer and Genomics

05 Feb 2021

The VCCC alliance took a look at the emerging area of personalised medicine for World Cancer Day last week with a live online event called Six weeks with my biopsy – a story of cancer and genomics.

At the same time, Science published a special issue on the 20th anniversary of the sequencing of the human genome – showing how far we have come in a short time.

While the Science editorial feature takes a deep dive into the complicated legacies of the achievement – and prompts scientists everywhere to reflect on where they were 20 years ago – the VCCC event presented a discussion about the effect genomic sequencing has had on one individual and how that impacts on the whole cancer community whether they be a patient, researcher or clinician.

After losing an eye to melanoma 12 years ago, Vicky Morrison’s cancer returned four years ago with tumours in her head, lungs and thorax.

When standard treatments proved to be no longer effective, Vicky took part in whole-genome sequencing, learning her disease was different from standard melanoma cases and may respond to a novel immunotherapy compound.

During the discussion, Dr Belinda Lee, Dr Stephen Luen, Dr Richard Tothill and Vicky provide some compelling insights, demonstrating how genomics innovation and use in clinical care is a progressive area and how recent advances in science and technology have helped speed up the pace of this area of research.