A blood cancer sufferer has handed over $5.5 million to give other Australians access to revolutionary testing that will improve treatment options and extend their lives.
For 25 years Melbourne woman Christine Wilson has lived with lymphoma, one of the so-called "snipers" of the cancer world.
Unlike other forms of the disease - linked to abnormal genes or habits such as smoking - blood cancers like lymphoma often result from spontaneous mutations that occur as the body makes new blood cells en masse.
It's one reason they can be so difficult to properly diagnose and treat, because there's so much that can go wrong.
And that's where genomics testing comes in.
It involves testing a patient's blood for critical gene mutations, enabling doctors to hone in on what's going on and making sure patients are on the right treatments.
In some cases, arduous rounds of chemotherapy might be avoided entirely if doctors can identify patients who are unlikely to respond to it.
Many people with lymphoma can be cured and Mrs Wilson has been among the lucky ones.
She wants all Australians to benefit from the latest cutting edge technology, which holds the promise of personalised, targeted treatments.
"We were struck by how genetics testing can save lives or improve quality of life for a group of patients who are in dire need of other treatment options," she said.
Professor Miles Prince is the co-founder of the Snowdome Foundation, which led fundraising for the new Christine and Bruce Wilson Centre for Lymphoma Genomics at Victoria's Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.
Prof Prince says making forensic genetic analysis quick and affordable is a game changer for sufferers.
"We've really been in the dark and it's only been the last few years that we've been able to identify the mutations that are occurring. Now we have the funding to properly diagnose patients," he said.
"A lot of patients with lymphoma are cured but some are not and this will identify those patients at risk of not responding to standard treatments."
