Dr Piyush Grover is one of Cancer Council WA’s Suzanne Cavanagh Early Career Investigator Grant recipients. Dr Grover and his team at The University of Western Australia want to learn more about allergies to anti-cancer medications and its impact on those who experience them. Identifying and understanding these reactions is essential to ensure cancer patients have adequate access to treatment options and receive the support they need. Unfortunately, these reactions are often underdiagnosed and underreported.
A drug allergy is an abnormal and unpredictable immune reaction to a medication. Drug allergies to life saving anti-cancer drug(s) can be devastating for patients, their loved ones, and their carers.
While the development of new anti-cancer treatments has led to better outcomes for patients, these treatments often have side effects, including allergic reactions. Unfortunately, allergic reactions to anti-cancer drugs are not well understood and there are no specific supports or resources available to clinicians or patients to help navigate this issue.
Allergic reactions to anti-cancer drugs can range from mild to life-threatening and may affect people in various ways -such as delaying treatment, or stopping them from undergoing otherwise effective treatment options. They affect people’s physical and mental wellbeing. Even though these allergic reactions occur across all types of cancer, there’s no clear process or dedicated service to managing them. As a result, some patients may have to miss out on effective treatments.
Dr Grover and his team aim to understand the nature and impact of these drug reactions and what patients go through when they experience them. They are also piloting a clinic service involving cancer and allergy specialists to provide specific advice to patients and their treating cancer team on management of allergic reactions to anti-cancer drugs.
To do so, they are taking a comprehensive approach to understand the who, why, when, where and how of these reactions, and will also interview patients who have experienced allergic reactions to anti-cancer drugs to explore the impact of the reaction on their cancer care and wellbeing. These learnings will feed into a novel and dedicated “Allergo-Oncology” service into the already established drug allergy clinic at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. This is an exciting opportunity in this developing field, and Dr Grover’s work is the first research of its kind in Australia to take a close look at allergies to anti-cancer medications. The research team plans to explore the issue, test out the new service, and see if it could work well in real healthcare settings.
They will also advocate for patient-centred services through sharing the research findings, helping to shape local and national guidelines, redesigning services and creating opportunities for further research. The team hope that understanding the nature of allergy to anti-cancer drugs in a collaborative care model and keeping the needs of patients at the forefront will support West Australian cancer patients having access to the best treatment available.
