February is Ovarian Cancer Awareness month, and a very timely discovery has been made by Sydney’s Garvan Institute of Medical Research which has fantastic potential for early diagnosis of this terrible disease.

Ovarian cancer is currently the most lethal gynaegological cancer in Australia, with almost 850 women dying from the disease each year*.

It is very difficult to detect, and is often only discovered once it has spread past the pelvis and into other organs (often the stomach, bowel and lungs). But Australian scientists from the Garvan have identified early biochemical changes which may help diagnose the cancer before it spreads.

ACRF is delighted to be associated with positive research findings leading to possible treatments for Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML).

Scientists from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) in Melbourne, in collaboration with local and international scientists, have found a potential ‘achilles heel’ for this terrible disease which has such a poor prognosis.

They have found that AML cells may be susceptible to medications that target a protein called Mcl-1. Treatments removing that protein from AML cells can rapidly kill these aggressive cancer cells.

“Importantly, non-cancerous blood cells were much less susceptible to dying when Mcl-1 was depleted,” said lead researcher, Dr Stefan Glaser.

Two ACRF-funded cancer research centres have worked in collaboration to discover a mutant gene that increases the risk of melanoma in approximately 200,000 Australians.

The gene, known as MITF, is known for regulating pigmentation – turning the skin brown after exposure to the sun, for example.

But cancer researchers at the Westmead Institute of Cancer Research (a 2011 ACRF grant awardee) together with the Queensland Institute of Medical Research have found that in many Australians, MITF is mutated, working abnormally to increase the risk that sunlight or other causes will cause malignant melanomas by 250%.

Please click here or on the image (right) to read our top stories on cancer research, fundraising around Australia, and ACRF news for September.

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Chair of the ACRF Medical Research Advisory committee (and co-creator of the cervical cancer vaccine), Professor Ian Frazer is currently working on a world-first strategy to combat skin cancer.

“This group of cancers (skin cancers)…may be started off by a virus infection – which presents a great opportunity, because the idea of vaccinating to prevent a cancer is enormously appealing,” Professor Frazer said.

Professor Frazer believes some virus types, including the wart virus or HPV, are embedded in the layers of the skin, and they pose a skin cancer risk when people with damaged or weak immune systems are overexposed to the sun.