TRANSCRIPT
Kevin Packham is a tall, fit-looking 63-year-old who loves to throw his golf clubs into a sports car and play a round at a local course.
It’s one of the few pleasures he has left, after radical surgery to remove tumours in his abdomen.
"I have no spleen, two parts of my colon were taken out. A little bit of shaving on the diaphragm, bit on the liver, peritoneum. They say it's the toughest surgery that you can probably have. The operation took nine and a half hours and I was in hospital for the best part of a month. I can't jog, I can't run. I can't play football any more."
That was after Mr Packham was diagnosed with a very rare type of asbestos-related cancer that affects just a few hundred people in Australia each year.
"I was diagnosed with peritoneal mesothelioma, which is very rare because it means that I at some stage ingested asbestos. Perhaps through my career as a real estate agent over 30 years? That's the only probable sort of reason that I could think of."
After many tests failed to identify the cause of his abdominal pain, Mr Packham and his wife Jo recall the day doctors finally delivered the mesothelioma diagnosis.
KEVIN: "We won't forget that morning. The gastroenterologist called me and said, 'I need to see you urgently.' "
JO: "We knew then something was serious."
KEVIN: "He said come in. And basically he then told me that I had peritoneal mesothelioma."
JO: "I'd never heard of it before. Yeah, I actually didn't know what it was."
KEVIN: "We knew some sort of asbestos disease. He said, 'But it's serious. You need to get your affairs in order.' "
Exposure to the carcinogen asbestos causes mesothelioma - a highly aggressive type of cancer that usually affects the lining of the lungs.
Patient survival is usually very poor according to Dr Anthony Linton, Academic and Research Director at Australia’s Asbestos and Dust Diseases Research Institute, or ADDRI.
"The continued death toll from asbestos-related diseases such as mesothelioma is still much too high, with a prognosis of usually between about 12 and 18 months in patients diagnosed."
Asbestos was officially banned in Australia 20 years ago yet its impacts are still being felt.
Around 700 people die of mesothelioma in Australia each year.
Exposure can occur during home renovations, or at work with mining and plumbing among the high-risk occupations.
Dr Linton explains:
"Many of our patients who were exposed as young men or young women are now being diagnosed at age 50, 60, 70 years old, many decades after their initial exposure. Unfortunately, for the majority of patients with mesothelioma, we don't identify their disease until it is already very well established."
That’s why ADDRI’s research is so crucial.
Dr Linton’s team is working on a new test which aims to detect the disease at an early stage before it has spread too far.
It looks for biomarkers in blood samples – a bit like a COVID PCR test.
"PCR has been used in many applications over many years now. But however, we are principally using it to identify small fragments of genetic material within our patient samples of patients who have been affected by mesothelioma. We've been able to identify a number of candidate genetic markers that offer hope that they may be able to be used to diagnose patients with mesothelioma as an adjunct or instead of the diagnostic surgical procedures."
Scientific Researcher Ben Johnson says tests could be used to target high-risk groups in a range of settings.
"The hope is that we will be able to apply this technique in the clinical setting to diagnose asbestos-exposed individuals at an earlier stage. We could then establish pop-up clinics in areas that are known to have a history of asbestos use so that we could target individuals that are likely to be at high risk of developing mesothelioma. So patient survival outcomes are likely to be significantly improved if treatments can be administered earlier."
More than one million dollars in funding for mesothelioma research and awareness has been provided by a foundation set up in honour of businessman Biaggio Signorelli, who migrated from Italy and later died of mesothelioma.
The foundation was set up by his son, Paul Signorelli.
"My mission to this day, and I'm passionate about this because there's many families that are victims of their loved ones being taken by asbestos. So, my promise to my father and my promise to the foundation is I will uncover every stone (leave no stone unturned) to find a cure, treatment and awareness for asbestos cancer."
Kevin Packham hopes new tests will one day improve outcomes for more than 600 people in Australia diagnosed with mesothelioma each year.
"If I had early diagnosis, it would've changed things dramatically for me. The operation would've been a lot less radical, potentially. And it's something which is so difficult with this particular disease is to find it early. I believe an earlier diagnostic test would be a game-changer."
While tests won’t be available immediately, Dr Linton hopes in coming years the ADDRI research will support clinicians in Australia and worldwide.
"Although asbestos has been banned in Australia for the last 20 years, its use is absolutely widespread throughout the world, particularly in Southeast Asia, and we're working very closely with them to not only assist their clinicians in better diagnosing these diseases, but also working on legislation that could see the elimination of asbestos from these countries."
