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The man who defied a brain cancer diagnosis · The Front

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  Speaker 1: You can listen to the Front on your smart speaker
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  Speaker 1: every morning to hear the latest episode, just say play
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  Speaker 1: the news from the Australian.
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  Speaker 2: From the Australian, I'm Claire Harvey. A special bonus episode
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  Speaker 2: of The Front for you today. It's the fourth in
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  Speaker 2: a special series of essays written especially for The Australian's
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  Speaker 2: sixtieth anniversary. Today, the twenty twenty four Australians of the Year,
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  Speaker 2: Professors Richard Scolia and Georgina Long reflect on the pivotal
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  Speaker 2: role science plays in Australian life and how a very
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  Speaker 2: personal experience has helped them pioneer a revolutionary new cancer treatment.
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  Speaker 2: That's today's episode. It's generally accepted that if you catch
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  Speaker 2: cancer early, treatment is less severe, the prognosis is better.
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  Speaker 2: But as with most things, there are exceptions when it
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  Speaker 2: comes to cancer. That exception is glioblastoma. It appears in
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  Speaker 2: the brain or the spinal cord quickly and it ravages
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  Speaker 2: the healthy tissue there with devastating efficiency. Every new diagnosis,
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  Speaker 2: whether it's made in a day or in a year,
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  Speaker 2: is automatically classified as Grade four. That's how serious it is.
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  Speaker 2: Few people diagnosed live longer than two years.
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  Speaker 3: Everything changed in May twenty twenty three when I suffered
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  Speaker 3: a seizure in a hotel room high in the mountains
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  Speaker 3: in Poland. It came only a day after a conference
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  Speaker 3: in Crackout, where I had delivered a day of presentations
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  Speaker 3: as the most populist melanoma pathologist in the world.
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  Speaker 2: That's world renowned pathologist Professor Richard Skollier. He's reading an
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  Speaker 2: excerpt for an essay he penned with his longtime collaborator
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  Speaker 2: and colleague, Professor Georgina Long for The Australian.
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  Speaker 3: The seizure came without warning. It was clear early on
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  Speaker 3: that the diagnosis and prognosis would dire.
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  Speaker 2: By the magic of the Internet. Scans taken in Poland
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  Speaker 2: were transmitted to Long back in Australia, who passed them
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  Speaker 2: around to their expert colleagues at the Melanoma Institute Australia,
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  Speaker 2: which they founded together. There it was they said.
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  Speaker 3: Each concluded that the ill defined patch of white tissue
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  Speaker 3: in the brain looked like a particular type of terminal
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  Speaker 3: brain cancer glia blastoma.
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  Speaker 2: Professors Scholar and Long have dedicated their careers to fighting
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  Speaker 2: another type of cancer, melanoma. It's a type of skin
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  Speaker 2: cancer and it's one of the most diagnosed in Australia.
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  Speaker 2: Almost twenty thousand people were diagnosed last year alone, and
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  Speaker 2: it's estimated just over thirteen hundred died. The mission of
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  Speaker 2: the Melanoma Institute, headed up by Scholar and Long, is
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  Speaker 2: simple eradicate deaths this decade through their world leading research
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  Speaker 2: and immunotherapy treatment programs. They're making great strides, but it
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  Speaker 2: hasn't always been this way. Scholar and Long right for
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  Speaker 2: the Australian that melanoma once presented a similar prognosis to
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  Speaker 2: glia blastoma or worse. Many of those diagnosed had just
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  Speaker 2: months to live, but then this happened.
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  Speaker 4: It's Nobel Prize Week and today the Nobel Committee announced
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  Speaker 4: its twenty eighteen award in Medicine. Jim Allison, an American
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  Speaker 4: research scientist, and Tasuku Hanja from Japan helped create a
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  Speaker 4: revolutionary cancer treatment that continues to save lives.
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  Speaker 5: For years, cancer treatment was dominated by four techniques surgery, radiation, chemotherapy,
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  Speaker 5: and hormone treatments. There is now a fifth category because
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  Speaker 5: researchers overcame a fundamental challenge in the past. They couldn't
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  Speaker 5: recruit the body's own immune system to fight cancer, but
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  Speaker 5: today they can.
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  Speaker 2: This year, in January, Scholar and Long were awarded one
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  Speaker 2: of the nation's highest honors for their work harnessing that
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  Speaker 2: monumental discovery.
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  Speaker 5: Well in a rare Jewel win.
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  Speaker 1: Professor Georgina Long and Professor Richard Scolia have been named
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  Speaker 1: joint Australians.
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  Speaker 2: Of the Year. Though it's not their specialty, few people
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  Speaker 2: were better placed to deal with a shock globe blastoma
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  Speaker 2: diagnosis than Richard Scolia and Georgina Long.
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  Speaker 1: So it's twenty four hours of grief for me. I
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  Speaker 1: think for Richard.
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  Speaker 2: And his family.
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  Speaker 1: There was a lot of grief and emotion and confusion,
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  Speaker 1: as it would be for anybody. But I am a
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  Speaker 1: problem solver and therefore went straight into thinking beyond the
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  Speaker 1: twenty four hours of grief, there must be something we
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  Speaker 1: can do. There's got to be something we can change.
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  Speaker 2: Professor Georgina Long was motivated to try something new because
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  Speaker 2: she was well aware that treatment of glioblastoma hadn't changed
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  Speaker 2: in decades, and that means the prognosis hadn't improved. So
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  Speaker 2: she devised a clinical trial harnessing the Holy Grail drugs
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  Speaker 2: that transformed treatment of melanoma.
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  Speaker 1: Our situation was unique to cancer researchers and clinicians.
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  Speaker 2: One was now the patient with an.
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  Speaker 1: Look, acknowledge and understanding of what diverting from standard treatment
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  Speaker 1: could mean, and the other myself, a medical oncologist with
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  Speaker 1: a bold plan for a world first experiment to apply
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  Speaker 1: melanoma science to glya blastomer.
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  Speaker 2: This intricate scientific process is laid out in great detail
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  Speaker 2: in the professor's essay for The Australian. But against the
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  Speaker 2: odds and many unknowns, it worked. A year after the
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  Speaker 2: scientist became the subject. Professor Richard Sculler is cancer free.
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  Speaker 3: To be honest, I'm feeling fine, almost great at the moment.
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  Speaker 3: It's been an up and down journey going through treatment
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  Speaker 3: of cancer. At times it's been tough, and I'm very
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  Speaker 3: thankful to the incredible medical team that are looking after me,
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  Speaker 3: particularly my colleague Georgina for all she's done. Fingers crossed
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  Speaker 3: that things stay well in the future.
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  Speaker 2: Coming up why I joined Australians of the Year will
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  Speaker 2: never stop trusting the process. Australians have long been scientific
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  Speaker 2: pioneers and subscribers to The Australian have been first to
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  Speaker 2: hear about their transformative work for sixty years. Join us
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  Speaker 2: at the Australian dot com dot au and we'll be
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  Speaker 2: back after this break. When a glioblastoma diagnosis rocked Professor
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  Speaker 2: Richard Scollier's world, it was science that provided the path forward.
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  Speaker 1: Science and its inherit uncertainty, however, has been maligned of late.
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  Speaker 1: For the most part, Australians have been highly trusting of science.
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  Speaker 1: In many ways, the scientific approach aligns with traditional Australian
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  Speaker 1: values of teamwork, madship, courage, hard work, humility and honesty.
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  Speaker 1: But in the modern world, dogged by misinformation and driven
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  Speaker 1: by profit, and where people are being asked to make
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  Speaker 1: important personal, financial and social decisions based on science, there
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  Speaker 1: can be a sense of skepticism and in our situation,
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  Speaker 1: the scientific motive and urgency to deal with our problem
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  Speaker 1: is difficult to argue. With a terminal brain cancer diagnosis
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  Speaker 1: where treatment has not changed in almost twenty years, when.
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  Speaker 3: The threat is harder to see, however, we have to
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  Speaker 3: rely on trust.
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  Speaker 2: Rebuilding that trust in a nation full of sun worshipers
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  Speaker 2: is no mean feat. Research done by Richard Skollier and
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  Speaker 2: Georgina Long shows a worrying amount of young people are
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  Speaker 2: still prepared to roll the dice.
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  Speaker 3: So how do we get Australians to trust in science,
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  Speaker 3: take the risk seriously and act now. This is a
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  Speaker 3: challenge we as a nation are still grappling with as
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  Speaker 3: our tanning culture continues to impact the behavior of impressionable
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  Speaker 3: young Australians in particular. Science is deeply embedded in modern life,
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  Speaker 3: but science will not always give us the answers and
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  Speaker 3: solutions wordlike they can seem in complete, unpalatable and excessive.
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  Speaker 2: The scientists are thrilled with what they've achieved, both in
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  Speaker 2: reducing melanoma rates around the globe and in pioneering new
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  Speaker 2: treatment for glioblastoma, but they're also realistic about their field's limitations.
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  Speaker 1: So with science, you have a hypothesis, test it, and
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  Speaker 1: then you test it again. Richard's just one person, one case.
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  Speaker 1: That is not enough to say that this is a
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  Speaker 1: success or not. We need to understand more and we
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  Speaker 1: need to see how this plays out in a larger
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  Speaker 1: number of people. And so the next step in this
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  Speaker 1: and making sure that this is something worth pursuing is
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  Speaker 1: to do a clinical trial in a larger number of
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  Speaker 1: people and we're really looking forward to taking that next step.
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  Speaker 3: I'm proud that we've done that. As Georgina says, that's
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  Speaker 3: not the end of the road, it's really the beginning
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  Speaker 3: of the road.
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  Speaker 2: Scholar and Long believe they're in a unique position to
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  Speaker 2: counteract the skepticism and suspicion that's beset science in recent years.
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  Speaker 1: So skepticism based on faith and heartfelt things is not science.
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  Speaker 1: Skepticism based on the data in front of you and
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  Speaker 1: questioning to get to the truth is science. And science
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  Speaker 1: is frustrating because sometimes you can't get there and you
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  Speaker 1: have to work harder and find another way around. And
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  Speaker 1: so this is a difference that we need to understand.
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  Speaker 1: And I hope that as us as a strainer of
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  Speaker 1: the year, as scientists, as clinicians, that we can show
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  Speaker 1: our own experience the frustrations the pitfalls of science. But
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  Speaker 1: science delivers. Science is our life passion. It is equal
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  Speaker 1: parts rewarding, intriguing, challenging, and frustrating. Science is also powerful.
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  Speaker 1: It is the lifeblood for advances that have transformed societies
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  Speaker 1: and benefited billions across the globe for centuries.
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  Speaker 2: You can read Richard Scholias and Georgina Long's sixtieth anniversary
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  Speaker 2: essay right now at the Australian dot Com dot a
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  Speaker 2: u