A Structure Destined to Create a Unique Australian Resource

The ACRF Centre for Therapeutic Target Discovery will form the scientific cornerstone of the first Comprehensive Cancer Centre to be established in Australia. The initial phase of the Melbourne Comprehensive Cancer Centre (MCCC) was formally launched in August 2005 by a consortium that includes the Royal Melbourne Hospital (Melbourne Health), Royal Women’s Hospital (which is due to relocate to the RMH site in 2008), The Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (Parkville campus), The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (which recently received $80M n funding towards the construction of a greatly expanded building), and The University of Melbourne.  Click here for the media release.

Estabishment of the MCCC

MCCC's establishment followed the growing recognition of the need for an integrated approach to cancer service delivery and basic, translational and clinical research. Ultimately it is anticipated that the consortium will join with the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. This would enable a Comprehensive Cancer Centre similar to US Centre models such as the MD Anderson, Mayo Clinic and St Judes.
The MCCC has enlisted representation from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre to its advisory committee. Distinguished neurosurgeon and world leader in the management of brain tumours,
Professor Andrew Kaye, was appointed in November 2005 as interim Director of the MCCC, to spearhead the organization of the Centre and to drive groundbreaking collaborations, the first of which is the Centre for Therapeutic Target Discovery.

The MCCC is located within the research precinct in Parkville. Its member institutions have international reputations in basic and clinical haemopoietic, colorectal and breast cancer research as well as bioinformatics, and these strengths form the base upon which the Centre’s ambitious research agenda will grow.  Individually and through long-standing collaborations, the research institutes that form part of the MCCC have decades of expertise in cancer research under the leadership of Australian luminaries, including Professors Metcalf, Burgess, Cory, Adams, and Nicola.

A very active clinical trials program incorporating many first-in-man studies (Cancer Trials Australia), a well-resourced clinical informatics platform (Bio21 Medical Informatics Module) and an established and growing Cancer Research Tissue Bank (supported by the Victorian Breast Cancer Research Consortium and Ludwig Institute), already exist on campus and will be integrated within the MCCC. Adding to these critical resources for successful cancer research, the ACRF has recently committed to infrastructure funding at RMH and the Ludwig Institute to enable translational research in haemopoietic malignancies and biomarker discovery in colorectal tumours. These latter facilities will complement the new Centre proposed in this application and be empowered by its output.

ACRF Centre for Therapeutic Target Discovery

The unifying theme for the proposed ACRF Centre for Therapeutic Target Discovery is to address issues in cancer biology from novel and previously unexplored research perspectives, which have only recently become accessible through technological advances and exciting new paradigms in cancer biology. In a systematic fashion, we hope to identify the key components within tumours and signalling elements within a cancer cell that sustain its malignant potential. These should represent excellent candidates for targeted drug discovery, analogous to the notable successes achieved through the targeting of the ErbB2 receptor amplification with trastuzumab (Herceptin®) in selected breast cancers, the EGFR with gefitinib (Iressa®) or erlotinib (Tarceva®) in lung cancer, and bcr-abl fusion proteins or c-kit with imatinib (Glivec®) in chronic myeloid leukemia and gastrointestinal stroma tumours, respectively.

This application proposes to take our research efforts to a new level, by catalysing the establishment of vibrant collaborative efforts, and by applying our existing research strengths in a complementary
and synergistic manner to the investigation of important new paradigms in cancer biology. As outlined below, these will include investigation of the cancer stem cell hypothesis, a systems biology/genome-wide approach to spotlight events which trigger and sustain tumorigenesis and drug resistance in a given individual, and exploration of tumour/stromal interactions: all with the intent of identifying and validating new therapeutic targets.

The Chief Investigators

The chief investigators taking responsibility for the success of this program are mainly mid-career scientists, clinicians and clinician-scientists, many of who have established an international reputation itheir respective areas of cancer research. 

Their expertise includes:
- Haemopoietic and mammary stem cells and cell fate specification
- Epithelial differentiation and tumorigenesis
- Signal transduction (including cytokine signalling and regulation)
- Apoptosis
- Angiogenesis and lymphangiogenesis
- Bioinformatics
- Genomics

Importantly, the CIs, who will form the MCCC basic research directorate, enjoy the full support of an exceptional cadre of Australia’s elite senior cancer researchers: Professors Cory, Burgess, Adams, and Nicola, each of whom will be actively involved in the research programs. Further, each CI leads a substantial team of scientists, clinicians and allied researchers; and all have sound financial support from competitive research funding (see CVs).

By participating in Australia’s first CCC, the CIs have ready access to clinical input from like-minded clinical researchers with the proven clinical trial capacity to translate discoveries into treatment advances. Ongoing close collaboration between the scientist, clinician-scientist and clinical researcher will be a key feature of this initiative. The youth, enthusiasm and track record of this team will
ensure that the objectives of the ACRF Special Grant will be met over and over again over the next 10-20 years. 

MCCC Infrastructure.

The key infrastructural elements required to establish this new initiative are certainly beyond the affordability of any single research institution or hospital. However with ACRF support, MCCC will be able to amalgamate our efforts and establish the first research hub within the MCCC. The grant will enable the MCCC to leverage ACRF grant support to obtain the appropriate space, as well as financial and in-kind support from the founding member institutions to establish and operate the ACRF Centre for Therapeutic Target Discovery on the Parkville campus. WEHI, the Ludwig Institute and Melbourne Health have each made a strong commitment to the establishment and ongoing maintenance of the ACRF Centre. This support will include: access to facilities from the parent organisations, including administration and finance, human resources, information technology, general and engineering maintenance, laboratory security, as well as cutting edge molecular and cellular biology equipment and infrastructure, including core facilities that house confocal microscopy and live cell imaging, histology and molecular pathology services, existing flow cytometry facilities (to be markedly expanded through this application), animal services (to be expanded to enable xenograft models of human cancer and imaging) and media services and highthroughput DNA and RNA technology, and the ACRF-funded Joint ProteomicS Laboratory. A close interaction with the Australian Genome Research Facility (AGRF) is another invaluable asset.

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