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Forgotten cancers claim most lives

Cancer patient Lesley Ramsay. Picture: Ian Munro/The West Australian

WA patients are being recruited into one of the world's biggest studies of "forgotten cancers" which are rare but account for more than half of all cancer deaths.

Cancer Council Victoria is seeking 15,000 patients nationally to investigate the causes of less common cancers, including leukaemia, pancreatic cancer and brain tumours, which collectively claim the lives of about 1800 West Australians each year.

The five common cancers - breast, prostate, lung, bowel and melanoma - affect many more people but are responsible for less than half of cancer deaths.

The council wants to recruit 15,000 patients, and a similar number of unaffected family members, so they have at least 1000 people with one of 15 cancer types.

Researcher Fiona Bruinsma said it was challenging to run a big study because there were fewer people with the cancers and some did not survive.

Less common cancers tended to miss out on funding because they did not have a high profile.

"Historically, research dollars have been spent on the five most common cancers, which is reasonable given the number of people affected, but while they account for 54 per cent of diagnoses, they are only responsible for 46 per cent of cancer deaths," Dr Bruinsma said.

"And while there have been big inroads into breast cancer survival in the past 20 years, there has been very little progress with a disease like pancreatic cancer."

Lesley Ramsay, 68, knows first-hand that all cancers are not viewed the same, after incredibly facing three separate battles with the disease - melanoma many years ago, breast cancer about eight years ago and more recently, pancreatic cancer. It was brought home to her when she recently visited a Perth garden nursery with her daughter.

On sale were pink "breast cancer" roses to raise awareness and funding for research but there was no sign of a plant to boost the profile of pancreatic cancer, which has only a 5 per cent survival rate after five years.

"People are sympathetic but they don't really know much about pancreatic cancer - they might know it's serious but not much else," Ms Ramsay said.

"Having had breast cancer too, I can say the facilities and what is done for people with breast cancer are very different, with clear pathways and lots of support."

Details of the study are at forgottencancers.com.au.