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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-06-19 Daily Xml
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Cancer Vaccine Trials

The Hon. S.L. GAME (14:35): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before directing a question to the Attorney-General, representing the Minister for Health and the Premier, regarding cancer vaccine trials.

Leave granted.

The Hon. S.L. GAME:The Advertiser published a double-page spread on the weekend, titled 'Cancer vax is our only hope'. In the article it states:

Terminally ill Australians pinning their hopes on a cancer vaccine that uses a sample of their tumour to fight disease are terrified the cutting edge trial is about to be shut down.

Men, women and children with various stage 4 cancers are pleading with authorities to allow Adelaide Professor Nikolai Petrovsky and his medical team to continue producing and trailing the tailor-made vaccines out of his lab.

One participant, who has been told three times to prepare to die, has seen the regression of tumours on his lungs, hips, pelvis, shoulder and brain since being in Professor Petrovsky's vaccine trial. He has gained weight and is no longer in a wheelchair.

Professor Petrovsky developed the first 2009 pandemic swine flu vaccine in the world and the world's first vaccine developed with artificial intelligence. He developed SpikoGen, a successful protein-based COVID-19 vaccine, with eight million doses sold in Iran. Professor Petrovsky has more than 250 published peer-reviewed papers and is now a professor with the Australian Respiratory and Sleep Medicine Institute, as well as a professor with the Institute of Molecular Medicine in California.

This cancer vaccine trial is a well-advanced phase 1 trial. In the research world getting an idea out of the lab and into a phase 1 human trial is like passing through the eye of a needle. It is estimated that less than 0.1 per cent of medical research projects progress to a human phase 1 trial. So far, the vaccine has shown promising benefits and no side effects in these advanced cancer patients, who have no other treatment alternatives left. This cancer vaccine could be fast-tracked to the market in the next couple of years if human trial success continues. My questions to the Attorney-General are:

1. Have the Premier and the Minister for Health, Chris Picton, been briefed on the plight of the cancer trial and, if so, what steps have they undertaken to support and retain this world-leading research in this state?

2. What obligation does the Premier and the Minister for Health believe South Australia has to ensure these patients with late-stage cancer can continue to access their personalised vaccine treatment and to ensure there is no delay in making such potential life-saving cancer vaccines available to South Australians, retaining for South Australia the credit for this world-leading vaccine advance when it is successful?

3. Can the minister and the Premier explain why the cancer vaccine trial is being forced to suddenly relocate, despite there being plenty of empty labs, given the shifting of 350 researchers out of Flinders Medical Centre into the new Flinders University research building, visited by the Premier just last week, and despite the fact that the medical centre continues to receive commercial rents from Vaxine for its small lab space, in which the cancer work is undertaken?

4. Can the minister and the Premier reassure the public that this is not part of a witch-hunt against Professor Nikolai Petrovsky, prompted by his having exercised his rights of academic freedom to publicly express his expert views on COVID-19, his having acted as an expert witness in the South Australian judicial review and SA Health vaccine mandates case and his role in developing SpikoGen vaccine, a protein-based vaccine, wanted by many in the community, with this interest being perceived by SA Health to pose a threat to the mRNA and adenoviral vaccines they were aggressively promoting?

5. Does the minister and the Premier agree that Professor Petrovsky committed no offence in developing a successful protein-based COVID-19 vaccine to warrant harsh treatment, but instead that his team should be congratulated and rewarded for their monumental achievement against the odds, with SpikoGen vaccine being one of the only successful new human vaccines to be developed in Australia in the last 40 years?

The PRESIDENT: Before you answer, Attorney: the Hon. Ms Game, you are not a serial pest in this place for overly long explanations, but that was overly long. It probably would have been a better question on notice, okay? I have given you that courtesy, but I wouldn't do it again.

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector) (14:39): I will refer the specifics of the particular vaccine development program that she referred to to the Minister for Health in another place and bring back a reply. But I do wish to thank the honourable member for her support of what is a crucial element of our medical program; that is, vaccinations. Vaccinations are very well noted as one of the greatest developments in medicine and evidence-based medicine and public health that we have seen in a very long time. I thank the honourable member for her strong support of vaccinations as a public health measure in so many areas that keep us much healthier than we would be without them.

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