More than $100 million in grants was announced this Tuesday for an ambitious research project that will try to find what makes cancer so hard to beat. This project received $21.3 million from Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council grants.
It will investigate the way cancer cells ignore signals that otherwise prompt normal cells to kill themselves off when needed – a process known as apoptosis. It will examine the way some tumours appear to be powered by a handful of “rogue stem cells”, which can escape some conventional tumour-focused treatments and trigger a relapse.
The venture is collaboration between the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, the Burnet Institute and The Royal Melbourne Hospital. The funds will come in for five years. The WEHI was also granted a $17.1 million program to further studies of the molecular processes that regulate blood cell production and function.
Professor Jerry Adams, joint head of WEHI’s Molecular Genetics of Cancer division said, “We are now focused upon understanding two hallmarks of cancers - how they evade the body’s normal program of cell death and how, like normal stem cells, they can multiply indefinitely... We discovered that cell death (known as apoptosis) is often blocked in cancer cells, so we are now attempting to develop drugs that flip the natural cell death switch back on.” He explained how some tumours show “stem cell like behaviour” which meant killing off or cutting out one tumour may not stop another from developing. “These tumours may be driven by rogue stem cells that can escape current treatments and cause a relapse…If so, eradication of these rare cells within the bulk tumour will require development of novel therapies that target them,” he added.
Other research projects on the cards for funding include the $15.7 million to the Australian National University project to explore autoimmune diseases, inflammation, allergy and immunodeficiency. Also planned is the $14.7 million University of Melbourne study on immunity, vaccine development in infectious disease or even cancer and diabetes. Then there is the $12.6 million University of Melbourne study of how chemotherapy could be used to boost the immune system and $8.7 million to the National Stoke Research Institute to develop new interventions to reduce the deaths and disability caused by stroke. A further $5.9 million would be granted to the Children’s Cancer Institute Australia to develop new treatments with fewer side-effects for the treatment of cancer in children and $5.6 million to the Queensland Institute of Medical Research to study the process by breast cancer can also spread to the brain and lungs. There is a further $5.2 million promised to the University of Sydney to examine the effectiveness of an expanded program which supports people who have mental illness with developmental disabilities.
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