Professor Mark Polizzotto has won an NHMRC award for his global study testing whether a daily tablet could replace chemotherapy for a cancer that kills up to half its patients in Africa.
Professor Polizzotto, Clinical Director of Cancer Services at Canberra Health Services and Head of the Clinical Hub for Interventional Research (CHOIR) at Ƶ (ANU), received the David Cooper Clinical Trials and Cohort Studies Award which recognises the highest-ranked clinical trial of the year.
Professor Polizzotto said the award holds personal significance for him. It is named in honour of the late Professor David Cooper, a pioneering HIV researcher and immunologist at the University of New South Wales, who had been both a colleague and mentor.
“David’s work in making simple HIV treatments accessible in Africa has been a direct inspiration for our work in global oncology,” he said.
“It feels like a validation of the work and a connection to David, who I believe would have supported the trial wholeheartedly if he were still with us.
“It’s also rewarding to have peers recognise the value of work that is outside the mainstream of cancer research.”
Professor Polizzotto’s research program is focused on developing cancer treatments designed specifically for low-resource settings.
“Our goal is to develop an end-to-end ‘one stop shop’ cancer care pathway that can be implemented at the local health care level,” he said.
His work has already led to the first new treatment for Kaposi sarcoma (KS) in more than 20 years – a cancer that remains common and deadly in parts of Africa.
“Up to half of people with KS in Africa die within a year, and many survivors are left with long-term disability,” he said.
The award-winning trial, known as IMPALA-KS, will test a new approach: replacing chemotherapy with a daily tablet.
The study is a large international trial designed to show the new treatment is at least as effective as existing chemotherapy, comparing oral pomalidomide, an immune-modulating therapy, with standard intravenous chemotherapy.
“Our work showed that a simple oral immune therapy is an effective treatment, but it has not been evaluated in Africa where the need is greatest,” he said.
The IMPALA-KS trial spans more than a dozen collaborators across Africa, Europe, the United States and Asia, including key clinical sites in Uganda, Botswana and Zimbabwe.
Importantly, more than half of the investigators are based in resource-limited settings.
“We’ve made efforts within the trial to develop local capacity,” Professor Polizzotto said.
“We have incorporated structured mentorship frameworks to train the next generation of researchers and enable meaningful projects for emerging investigators at the African clinical sites within the trial.”
