Cancer is always unfair but sometimes its timing is particularly cruel.
Imagine for a moment that you’re a 22-year-young man on the brink of independent adult life. You’ve just completed university, landed a graduate position with a good company, moved into an apartment with your girlfriend, and you’re saving money for a dream overseas trip. And then you find a strange lump on your shoulder blade …
In May this year Jacques Mathot was diagnosed with Ewing Sarcoma, an aggressive cancer of bone and connecting tissue which has a notoriously poor survival rate.
Like many Ewings sufferers, Jac’s painful shoulder was initially misdiagnosed as a sports injury. By the time scans had been done, the tumour in his scapula was ten centimetres across and the cancer had spread to his pelvis and spine.
Jac is now undergoing high-dose chemotherapy and is about to start radiotherapy, a punishing treatment regime which he is facing with remarkable good humour. 
But while the tumours are shrinking, the oncologists know from bitter experience that the cancer is highly likely to develop resistance to the treatment and return with a vengeance. Jac’s odds of being cured by conventional treatment, they say, are only one-in-four.
For decades there have been no significant advances in the treatment of Ewing Sarcoma. Now, almost miraculously, Jac has another treatment option. Molecular profiling of his cancer has found that it contains a mutation often seen in breast cancer. That mutation is the target for a revolutionary new breast cancer drug called Enhertu, which is proving highly effective.
Jac’s doctors think this is really worth trying, but in his rare case Enhertu is not covered by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, and the drug company has declined to provide compassionate access. His family must therefore pay the huge cost in full – and that will be at least $120,000.
If the money can be raised, Jac could become a textbook example of an exciting new approach to cancer treatment, which involves matching an existing drug to the individual molecular profile of the patient’s cancer. It’s about giving the right drug to the right patient, at the right time – a targeted approach that has proven to be six times more effective than one-size-fits-many chemotherapies.
Please help Jac resume the life he dreams of and has worked so hard for. In doing so, you’ll also be spotlighting a potential way forward for other rare cancer sufferers who find that conventional cancer treatments are not enough and who might really benefit from new and emerging drug therapies.
