Roger Reddel named Outstanding Cancer Researcher of the Year

The accolades keep on coming for Children’s Medical Research Institute (CMRI) director, Professor Roger Reddel, with him being awarded the NSW Premier’s Award for Outstanding Cancer Research at a ceremony last week.

In 2007 Professor Reddel was awarded the Ramaciotti Medal for Excellence in Biomedical Research, and in 2010 he was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.

This accolade comes in recognition of his research on the ability of cancer cells to keep on proliferating without limits, a property called “immortalisation”.

He has also made significant contributions to the field in understanding the role of telomere length in immortalisation, especially relating to the enzyme telomerase upon which 85 per cent of all cancers depend for their growth

He and his team also discovered an alternative mechanism on which the other 10-15 per cent of cancers depend, called Alternate Lengthening of Telomeres.

When Dr Reddel began researching cellular immortalisation only a handful of researchers internationally thought it had any role in human cancers. Today, cellular immortalisation is widely recognised as an almost universal characteristic of cancers. It may also be an important target for new anti-cancer treatments that specifically limit cancer cell proliferation.

“Because the overwhelming majority of cancers contain immortalised cells, and normal body tissues do not, if we can develop treatments that target immortalisation we expect that they will be useful for most types of cancers and have fewer side-effects on normal tissues than many of the cancer treatments available at present,” Professor Reddel said.

“We also expect that detecting tell-tale signs of cellular immortalisation will be helpful as a diagnostic test for early detection of cancer early – when it usually easier to cure.”