Detecting bowel cancer is more than gut instinct

Bowel (or colorectal) cancer is Australia’s second biggest cancer killer, affecting 9,127 males and 7,555 female Australians with over 17,000 new diagnoses a year.*

It is an indiscriminate and, in too many cases, unnecessary killer.

The lifestyle factors that create an adverse environment for bowel cancer development are diets low in dietary fibre, increasing consumption of red and processed meat, alcohol, smoking, low intake of vegetables and fruits and obesity combined with physical inactivity.

But even for those who do the right thing, the risk remains and the most significant factor in surviving bowel cancer is the stage at which it is detected: early detection leads to a staggering 95% survival rate but late detection too often results in death.

Unsurprisingly, the early detection of bowel cancer through screening of everyone over 50 years of age using acceptable, accurate and cost effective tests is a priority for our health-care system.

The team at Flinders University headed by Professor of Global Gastrointestinal Health, Graeme Young AM, answered the call by evaluating, refining and developing new screening test options over several decades. This led to the world-first Australian National Bowel Cancer Screening Program, which launched in 2006 and continues today.  By 2013, the team at Flinders were able to prove that this program resulted in a doubling of the number of cancers detected at the earliest stage, are having a 95% cure rate.

Unfortunately, acceptance of the faecal screening test provided through this program has been less than desirable, in part due to the ‘yuck’ barrier that some people experience with faecal testing. This lead the team, together with collaborators, to develop a new test that samples blood not faeces.

This new test, which detects DNA shed by the cancer into the blood, is conducted on a blood sample and eliminates the need to handle faecal material altogether.

This test also shows promise for simple monitoring of treatment of bowel cancer, it is a test case in commercialisation of Australian research.

By providing the option of a blood test for screening, we now have a strategy for overcoming this barrier, and it also allows us to detect recurrent bowel cancer at an earlier state, when it’s smaller in size.

But at Flinders University, making a difference goes beyond medical breakthroughs to innovations across the spectrum of community and industry imperatives.

Areas such as urban commuting through their pioneering work in driverless electric vehicles, in areas of community health and medicine such as new programmes to assist in healthy ageing and the development of online palliative care and the research programmes go deeply into conservation and ecological protections...one team has even looked at how to evaluate the true benefits of art to our community and economy.

Today, as part of a far-sighted plan, much of our research and evolutionary work is done in partnership with private enterprise in the pursuit of university-lead outcomes with genuine commercial applications.

This latest research ensures that Australia continues to lead the world in accessible cancer detection and prevention and Flinders University continues to play a lead role.

*Source: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare