Translating >> - Westmead Millennium Institute

14 15 > Overview // AR 2006
Cancer
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The Cancer division conducts groundbreaking laboratory
and clinical investigations into cancers common to
Australians to improve prevention and treatment strategies
and to establish new cures.
The Westmead Institute for Cancer Research bases its
research on the notion that if discoveries can be made to
understand the faults in the wiring of cancer at a molecular and
cellular basis - and how this differs from the make up of healthy
cells - then medical science can develop ways to correct the
defects.
One of the difficulties researchers face is a lack of suitable
human cancer research models. An outstanding success this
year has been the development of a three-dimensional model
of normal breast tissue. This model is enabling researchers
to grow tiny spheres of cells taken from breast tissue in a
highly organised structure, which is more closely aligned
physiologically to the human system than traditional cell culture
or animal models.
In using the model, researchers are unraveling the process of
how breast cells become cancerous through the actions of
the ovarian hormones oestrogen and progesterone. Major
advancements are already in play with researchers identifying
pathways these hormones control within the normal breast
cells. As work progresses, researchers hope to identify the
normal breast cell targets that control the interaction between
the ovarian hormones and cancerous cells to produce suitable
prevention strategies.
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The Institute hosts the newly opened Breast Cancer Tissue
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Bank. The bank has begun collecting breast cancer tissue
samples from hundreds of women with breast cancer across
NSW. This is a major achievement made possible through the
cooperation of clinicians and patients. Data from the samples
will be carefully linked back to the women’s follow up treatment
and outcomes and researchers from all over Australia will have
access to the bank to improve investigations into the disease.
Cancer researchers Rick Kefford and Graham Mann are the
determine the genetic signatures that make particular melanoma
tumours behave aggressively using modern gene expression
and microarray technology. Researchers hope to develop new
treatments that target molecular faults within the cells to improve
diagnosis and prognosis of this disease, enabling clinicians to give
patients better treatment and advice.
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Of all human cancers melanoma is most resistant to current
therapies and it is an area where researchers are also using gene
expression analysis (examining how genes operate within a cell)
to produce better treatment outcomes for patients. The Institute
is investigating features in the few melanomas that are sensitive
to treatment as a basis for developing techniques to breakdown
the disease’s resistance to chemotherapy.
Ovarian cancer is the most lethal gynaecological cancer. Each
year, more than 1,000 women in Australia are diagnosed and
more than 800 women die from the disease. Overall survival
rates are low with only about 45 per cent of women free of the
malignancy after five years.
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Most ovarian cancers are initially sensitive to chemotherapy.
However, the most common outcome for women with this
disease is for it to return within a couple of years and, when
the patient relapses, the cancer is most often resistant to
chemotherapy. There are however, a small group of patients
that respond extremely well to chemotherapy and are essentially
cured. Researchers in the Gynaecological Cancer Research
Group are trying to identify why some patients respond so
much better to treatment than others in the hopes of developing
new therapies based on gene targeting.
They have already identified one gene that may be used to
increase response to chemotherapy and this work has led to an
international patent. The researchers have found tumours that
express a lot of this gene tend to do worse, and that this gene
is over-expressed in ovarian cancer cells which are resistant to
treatment. (Expression is the process of a gene’s DNA sequence
being converted to proteins within cells.) The group is now
investigating methods to decrease the gene’s expression using
a novel technique called siRNA, which specifically targets the
Most cancers are due to genetic changes that accumulate in the cells with
leading chief investigators on a five-year NHMRC Program gene. The aim is to then apply conventional chemotherapy
age, but in 5 to 10 per cent of cases, patients have a family history of multiple
Grant and a Cancer Institute NSW Translational Program grant, to improve a patient’s response to treatment. Pre-clinical
cases of early-onset cancer. Many patients are enrolled in collaborative,
both of which commenced in 2006. These cement long-standing experiments are underway with a commercial partner being
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genetic-epidemiological studies investigating the familial aspects of cancer.
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melanoma treatment centre in the world. The programs aim to investigating other genes with similar characteristics to possibly
extend the treatment base.
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