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Simple blood test to improve cancer treatment

Cancer patients will be able to select and adapt their treatments based on a simple blood test that is being developed in partnership between QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute and Swiss start-up Biopsomic.

Head of QIMR Berghofer’s Tumour Micro-environment Research Group, Associate Professor Andreas Möller said if the research is successful it would boost the chances of successful treatment for cancer patients.

“At the moment, clinicians have no reliable way of predicting whether a particular patient will respond better to chemotherapy, immunotherapy, or any other therapy,” Associate Professor Möller said.

“This blood test could quickly and accurately indicate the most effective treatment for an individual patient.”

The test is being developed to read the content of exosomes. These exosomes are tiny, fluid-filled sacs that are shed by tumour cells into the blood of patients. They are essentially miniature blueprints of what is contained in the cancer cells.

“These exosomes offer insight into how cancer cells will likely behave. If their contents suggest a person’s cancer cells will not respond to a given therapy, then their clinician can explore more effective alternatives,” Associate Professor Möller said.

Biopsomic’s co-founder and co-inventor of the test, Dr Antoine Leimgruber MD says the medical decision process in managing cancer patients needs to improve.

“Patients are exposed to stressful and sometimes invasive diagnostic procedures that are not easily repeated. They deserve a new generation of minimally invasive, less expensive and accurate tests to allow their doctors to take the right decision at the right time for the specific situation of each patient.”

“Biopsomic technology contributes to personalised cancer management, a shift from the one-size fits all rule to improve each patient outcome and avoid non-useful and potentially harmful interventions.”

Under the licensing and option agreement, QIMR Berghofer will also conduct collaborative research with Biopsomic.

The terms of the agreement are commercial in confidence.

This article was originally published by QIMR Berghofer. ACRF has been backing brilliant cancer research by QIMR since 2007, awarding a total of $12.45M in funding.

More genetic risk factors for endometrial cancer uncovered

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Cancer researchers at ACRF grant recipient, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, along with research teams from the University of Cambridge and Oxford University, have discovered five new gene regions that increase a woman’s risk of developing endometrial cancer.

Endometrial cancer affects the lining of the uterus. It is the sixth most commonly diagnosed cancer in Australian women, with nearly 2,500 new cases expected to be diagnosed in 2016.

The study was led by the head of the Molecular Cancer Epidemiology laboratory at QIMR Berghofer, Associate Professor Amanda Spurdle, and has been published in Nature Genetics.

Associate Professor Spurdle said the findings helped to paint a clearer picture of the genetic causes of endometrial cancer in women who do not have a strong family history of cancer.

“Up until now, we have only known about four gene regions in women in the general population that contribute to the risk of developing endometrial cancer,” Associate Professor Spurdle said.

“In this study, we have identified another five, bringing the total to nine. This finding doubles the number of risk regions we know of, and therefore significantly increases our knowledge of the genetic drivers of endometrial cancer.”

The study also looked at how the identified gene regions might be increasing the risk of other cancers, and what the implications would be for the future treatment of endometrial cancer patients.

Interestingly, several of the gene regions we identified in the study were already known to contribute to the risk of other common cancers.

“As we develop a more comprehensive view of the genetic risk factors for endometrial cancer, we can start to work out which genes could potentially be targeted with new treatments down the track,” Associate Professor Spurdle said.

“In particular, we can start looking into whether there are drugs that are already approved and available for use that can be used to target those genes. Our genetic findings may also be useful, together with our knowledge of other risk factors, to identify women at risk of endometrial cancer so they can be regularly checked and be alert to the signs and symptoms.”

The Australian Cancer Research Foundation has supported QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute by providing three grants, totalling AUD 6.65million, towards cutting edge cancer research equipment and technology.

The original news post was published on the QIMR Berghofer website.

Australian melanoma rates improve

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A study found that rates of invasive melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, have started to decline in Australia and are predicted to keep falling over the next 15 years.

Researchers at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute have found that Australia no longer has the highest per capita rates of invasive melanoma in the world, after being overtaken by New Zealand.

Researchers compared the rates of melanoma in six populations over a 30-year period from 1982 to 2011. The six populations were Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, and the caucasian population of the United States.

The researchers found that melanoma rates in Australia increased from about 30 cases per 100,000 people in 1982 and peaked at nearly 49 cases per 100,000 people in 2005. The rates then declined to about 48 cases per 100,000 people in 2011. Invasive melanoma rates in New Zealand reached about 50 cases per 100,000 people in 2011.

Professor David Whiteman, who led the study, said Australia was the only one of the six populations where melanoma rates had begun to fall overall.

“We think the main reason for this decline is that Australia has put a huge effort into primary prevention campaigns since the 1980s,” Professor Whiteman said.

“Australians have become more ‘sun smart’ as they have become more aware of the dangers of melanoma and other skin cancers. Schools, workplaces and childcare centres have also introduced measures to decrease exposure to harmful UV radiation.”

“This has contributed to a decline in melanoma rates in people under the age of about 50.”

“Unfortunately, rates of melanoma are still increasing in people over the age of about 50. This is probably because many older people had already sustained sun damage before the prevention campaigns were introduced, and those melanomas are only appearing now, many decades after the cancer-causing exposure to sunlight occurred.”

Despite the fall in average melanoma rates per 100,000 people, the overall number of invasive melanomas diagnosed in Australia is still rising and is expected to increase from 11,162 cases per year from 2007-2011, to 12,283 cases per year from 2012-2016.

Professor Whiteman said this was due to the ageing of the Australian population, as well as overall population growth.

“Melanomas occur most commonly in older people. As Australia’s population ages, the number of melanomas diagnosed will continue to increase,” he said.

“The picture in Australia at the moment is mixed. While it’s good news that average melanoma rates have started to fall, the fact that the actual number of cases is still rising is bad news.”

The Australian Cancer Research Foundation has supported cancer research at QMRI Berghofer by providing three grants, totalling AUD 6.65million towards cutting edge cancer research equipment and technology.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk Unveils ACRF Centre for Comprehensive Biomedical Imaging at QIMR Berghofer

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Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk unveiled Queensland’s newest weapon in the fight against cancer this week, opening the ACRF Centre for Comprehensive Biomedical Imaging at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute.

A $2.6 million grant from the Australian Cancer Research Foundation has funded the three state-of-the-art microscopes housed by the new lab – a significant and exciting advancement for the institutes researchers.

Ms Palaszczuk said the centre would allow QIMR Berghofer to unlock new techniques which would dramatically accelerate our understanding of cancer.

“To beat cancer, we need both brilliant minds and cutting edge technology – as we can see today, QIMR Berghofer has both,” Ms Palaszczuk said.

“This imaging facility will build on Queensland’s global reputation for research excellence.”

“And it builds on my government’s Advance Queensland strategy – to not only consolidate and grow our research base, but also develop investment opportunities to diversify and strengthen our economy.”

QIMR Berghofer Director and CEO Professor Frank Gannon said the new imaging equipment would allow the Institute to build on its world-leading immunotherapy program.

In recent days QIMR Berghofer has launched Phase II clinical trials of an immunotherapy treatment for nasopharyngeal carcinoma, and announced a major agreement with a global pharmaceutical company to discover cancer antibodies.

“Thanks to the generosity and vision of the ACRF we will be able to take our research to a new level of understanding and target cancer with greater accuracy as our scientists continue to deliver outcomes which have real consequences for patients,” says Professor Gannon.

The ACRF CCBI consists of three crucial pieces of imaging equipment: a multiphoton intravital microscope for imaging of live cells; a laser scanning confocal microscope for high resolution imaging of cancer at the molecular level; and a spinning disc confocal microscope for imaging signalling pathways in cancer cells.

The new equipment will also allow QIMR Berghofer scientists to study the process by which cancers metastasise, or spread, to distant tissues.

ACRF Trustee Russell Caplan said that since the ACRF was established in 1984 it has awarded more than $103.9 million to 34 research centres across Australia.

“Eleven of those grants ($23.3 million) have been distributed to research centres in Queensland and three of them have directly funded projects at QIMR Berghofer ($6.65 million).”

“These grants are awarded on the basis of research excellence and are subject to a rigorous approval process overseen by a Medical Research Advisory Committee made up of some of Australia’s most respected researchers, so it says a lot about the level of work being conducted at QIMR Berghofer,” Mr Caplan said.

To learn more about the other grants that have been awarded to leading research institutes across Australia click here.