Garvan receives $3.7 million for cancer research

The Cancer Institute of NSW has provided funding of $3.7 million to the Garvan Institute’s Cancer Research Program to support work into determining key biomarkers for breast, prostate and pancreatic cancer.

Over the next five years researchers hope to be able to use these biomarkers to stratify patients according to different subtypes of the three cancers, for example whether the particular breast, prostate or pancreatic cancers in question are in fact ‘good’ or ‘bad’ cancers.

Biomarkers will also play an important role in predicting patients’ response to therapy. Otherwise known as personalised medicine, it is hoped that this approach will result in patients receiving treatments which target the specific characteristics of their own tumours.

This is a key focus of the Kinghorn Cancer Centre, currently being built by Garvan and St. Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney and scheduled to open in 2012. The centre will also be dedicated to finding ways to minimise timelines between research discoveries and treatments.

Professor Rob Sutherland, leader of Garvan’s Cancer Program, Director of The Kinghorn Cancer Centre and primary grant recipient, said the grant will allow much ongoing research to progress to the next stage.

“We’ve already discovered many potential drug candidates through the ICGC [International Cancer Genome Consortium] project and through various NHMRC, Cancer Institute and Cancer Council grants,” he said.

“Our work is advancing to the point where there are possibilities through genomics work to identify and design specific markers for individual patients.”

“By looking at the proteomic or genomic profiles of tumours, you can actually identify specific genetic mutations or rearrangements that are specific for that tumour.”

At this point doctors can simply monitor the presence of those abnormalities in the blood following therapy and watch how the disease progresses.

The National Cancer Institute in the United States and Cancer Research UK have established a ‘pipeline’, or strategy, for biomarker discovery and development, in which Garvan already has a number of discoveries at various stages.

“We have, for example, biomarkers of responsiveness to anti-oestrogens, or aromatase inhibitors, in breast cancer,” Professor Sutherland said.

“In addition, we have samples from international clinical trials from women who’ve been treated with those agents. That puts us in a position to see how effective those markers are in predicting responsiveness to treatment – and to run a prospective clinical trial of our own.”

He added that the group also wants to be able to better determine the best course of treatment for men diagnosed with prostate cancer.

“What happens now is that people get over-treated because we can’t do the test that differentiates one prostate cancer from another.”

“To correct that situation, we’re testing prospectively for the prostate cancer marker throughout teaching hospitals in Sydney. In a couple of years, we’ll be in a position to confirm whether or not the marker actually does identify the patients that have the aggressive form of prostate cancer.”

“Once we have evidence from both retrospective and prospective studies that a test works, we have to roll it out into the clinical situation – which is all about regulatory approval.”

The grant from the Cancer Institute is for five years and covers the full ‘pipeline’ spectrum. This includes discovery through assay development, pilot studies, retrospective clinical analysis, prospective clinical trials and clinical implementation.