US Vice President Joe Biden has toured one of Australia’s top cancer centres.

Biden attended the opening of an immunotherapy research lab at the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre (VCCC) in Melbourne over the weekend, calling it an “honour” to see the inner-workings of the $1 billion facility.

“What you do here is profound, it has an impact on every corner of the world,” he told researchers and dignitaries at the centre.

“What you're doing here adds somewhat exponentially to the prospect of us being able to do in the next five years what would otherwise take five to 10 years.

“We're on the cusp of so many potential breakthroughs.”

The latest development is a $6 million, 60-person research lab built as the centrepiece of the VCCC’s 13th floor, as well as several other research-based programs.

The high-tech immunotherapy lab will bring together researchers from leading institutes like Peter Mac, the Doherty Institute and the University of Melbourne, in what proponents say could yield he biggest advances in cancer treatment since the advent of chemotherapy.

The lab and its links will allow new advances to be linked directly to clinical trials, patients and doctors.

“Immunotherapy is the first totally new treatment modality for cancer in over 50 years and it is already revolutionising cancer care as we know it,” said Peter Mac’s immunotherapy program chief Prof Joe Trapani.

While aggressive chemotherapy and radiotherapy can pinpoint a cancer directly, immunotherapy works with a patient’s own body to switch on immune defences to fight the cancer.

“This can only mean more Victorians affected by cancer will have access to the very latest in care and potential cures through immune-based therapies,” Prof Trapani said.

The US Vice President leads the National Cancer Moonshot Initiative, which is similarly accelerating research across the United States.

The issue was given a more personal aspect for Mr Biden last year, after he lost his 46-year-old son Beau to brain cancer.

He said it had taught him that time was all-important.

“You learn that a day makes a difference. You learn that people who know they have no chance are just saying to their clinicians; ‘Can you just give me one more month so I can give my daughter away at her wedding?’,” he said.

“It's personal. It's minutes, it's hours, it's days, it's months.”