WEHI receives $450,000 from VCA

The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) has received grants totalling $450,000 from the Victorian Cancer Agency to support its research into BH3 mimetics cancer drugs and the creation of an information sharing portal focussed on rare cancers.

Dr Kylie Mason, a senior postdoctoral fellow in the institute’s Cancer and Haematology division has received a $400,000 VCA Clinical Research Fellowship to maximise the potential of BH3 mimetic drugs.

A new class of cancer drugs, BH3 mimetics work by directly killing cancer cells. It is hoped that they will prove effective against diseases of the blood such as leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma, current treatments for which are inadequate.

“BH3 mimetic drugs directly promote the suicide of cancer cells and hold great promise for the treatment of patients suffering from cancer, particularly cancers of the blood,” Mason said.

“With a combination of integrated clinical trials and laboratory studies I aim to optimise the potential of these exciting agents for cancer treatment.”

The remaining $50,000 will go to Dr Clare Scott. A laboratory head at WEHI’s Molecular Genetics of Cancer division Scott is working on a project called CART-WHEEL, which is a web portal dedicated to coordinating patient information, research studies and clinical trials for rare cancers.

Rare cancers current account for around 20 percent of all cancers diagnosed and 31 percent of cancer-related deaths, Scott said. She added that there are more than 500 different types of rare tumour meaning that it is difficult to find significant groups of any one tumour type together in the one place.

“This website provides a new way of linking patients into the system of research and clinical trials, increasing the number of patients available for specialised research,” Scott explained.

“The ultimate goal for CART-WHEEL is to gather enough entries over time to make clinical trials for different types of rare tumours a possibility.”