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	Plans for a new state of the art cancer institute will be jointly announced by Trinity College Dublin and St James&rsquo;s Hospital later today.</p>
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	The first of its kind in Ireland, the institute will set a new standard for cancer care nationally, integrating medicine and science in cancer prevention, treatment and survivorship.</p>
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	Based on similar leading international models, it will be located in one designated facility at St James&rsquo;s Hospital, the largest university teaching hospital in Dublin.</p>
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	Plans for the new institute will be unveiled at the start of Cancer Week Ireland 2016 today. It kicks off with a conference at TCD that will explore new frontiers in personalised cancer care.</p>
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	Scientists and clinicians will discuss how immunotherapy, surgery and genomic profiling are fundamentally changing cancer treatment.</p>
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	Dr David Gallagher, a consultant oncologist and medical geneticist who heads the Cancer Genetics Unit at St James&rsquo;s Hospital, said optimism about personalised cancer care had grown again in the past two years.</p>
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	&ldquo;Attempts to combine multiple targeted therapies have been hampered by the overlapping toxicities of the individual drugs, and for a period of time the promise of personalised cancer care plateaued,&rdquo; said Dr Gallagher.</p>
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	Some of the cutting edge treatments modulate the immune system, actually turning the person&rsquo;s immune system against their cancer, producing remarkable results.</p>
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	And the emergence of germline genetic predictors of response to treatment means that an individual&rsquo;s core DNA could predict their response to different therapies.</p>
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	Dr Gallagher said the ability to target the epigenome &mdash; chemical compounds that can tell the genome what to do, also held considerable promise for stopping and reversing cancer very early in its development.</p>
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	&ldquo;These innovations will change cancer care dramatically over the next decade, but our greatest challenge may be to ensure that our creaking healthcare system maintains pace with this progress,&rdquo; he warned.</p>
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	Cancer Week Ireland, organised by the Irish Cancer Society and TCD and runs until next Sunday. Information on events is available at cancerweek.ie.</p>
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	(Pubished by the Irish Examiner on the 17th October 2016)</p>
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	<a href="http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/country-to-get-new-cancer-institute-426066.html">http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/country-to-get-new-cancer-institute-426066.html</a></p>
