Meet Professor Stephen Opat, who is our inaugural Program Director of Cancer Services. Stephen is founder and chair of the Australasian Lymphoma and Related Diseases Registry and lead investigator of the Melbourne Genomics Health Alliance Lymphoma Flagship. Prior to his new role, he was Director of Clinical Haematology at Monash Health.
“I’ve been at Monash since the 2000s,” says Professor Opat. “Apart from a couple of sabbaticals; one of them at the British Columbia Cancer Agency, and the other at Stanford. Those experiences made me realise that we actually do things really well at Monash Health. While we don’t have a huge public profile yet, our clinical research here is second to none.”
Stephen is also a Clinical Professor in the School of Clinical Sciences at Monash Health and a principal investigator in over 60 trials, mainly in lymphoid cancer. He is recognised internationally as a leader in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). He recently joined the Scientific Advisory Committee of the ALLG (Australasian Leukaemia and Lymphoma Group), the main Australasian blood cancer cooperative trials organisation, where he co-chairs the CLL working party.
“Over my time at Monash Health we’ve enrolled patients into 18 separate trials in CLL and have been at the forefront of every pivotal trial. Our patient’s participation has led to the registration of virtually all currently available treatments for CLL.”
“We have a huge catchment that also enables us to recruit patients to trials for rare diseases,” Stephen says. Monash Health’s catchment has over a million people, and we also receive referrals from across the state and occasionally interstate.
“But that also means we must prepare for a growing demand, because 35% of the population will get cancer at some point in their lifetime, and cancer patients are surviving longer than ever, so we will need to work out how to see everyone within the resources that we have.”
Professor Opat and his team are looking ahead to how we’ll deliver care in 2050. “Advances in diagnostics mean we can now identify the presence of cancer by the detection of DNA shed from the cancer in the patient’s bloodstream. So, soon we will be able to use blood tests to detect cancer cells without needing to do an invasive biopsy. However, currently it’s expensive and technologically difficult, but it’s likely to become routine in coming years.”
Professor Opat is equally excited for advances in therapies. “We’ve been involved in several trials making better versions of existing drugs. It’s surprising that by adjusting how a drug is absorbed, it’s half-life and a few chemical structures, you can reduce the side effects and improve the effectiveness of a drug.”
You can hear more of Professor Opat’s story here. Please make him feel welcome in his new role!
Approved by Associate Professor Anjali Dhulia, Chief Medical Officer