Janice Walsh

Now, there's been a landmark breakthrough in ovarian cancer treatment.

The NHS has approved this treatment and women are set to benefit over in the UK.

But how significant is this news for us here?

Janice Walsh is a consultant medical oncologist at St.

Vincent's University Hospital and she's with us now.

Good morning, Janice.

Good morning, Clare.

Thank you for being with us.

Are you excited about this breakthrough?

What do you think it means?

I think we're excited about this breakthrough like we've been excited about many breakthroughs.

I mean, this drug that we're talking about today is part of a group called antibody drug conjugates.

So they're kind of a new targeted therapy.

And essentially what they have is two components.

So they have an antibody which sticks to the abnormal cell and then it's attached to a small amount of chemotherapy that is then delivered into the cell and

to have a direct killing effect on those abnormal cells.

And I suppose in the land of ovarian cancer, where we've enjoyed very little success, despite a huge amount of investigation and novel drug discovery, this really has displaced drugs for the very first time in 20 years.

So in ovarian cancer, this is a very significant move.

So does that mean if it is directly attaching itself to the cancer cell that all of the harmful effects you get with chemotherapy would be vastly reduced?

So definitely reduce.