World-first technique brings breast cancer vaccine closer

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By Miranda Hunt
October 20, 2006 EAST

A novel technique being developed at the Mater Medical Research Institute (MMRI) will enable researchers to find proteins critical to breast cancer immunotherapy more quickly, testing up to 2000 genes in a matter of weeks.

Lead researcher, Dr Kristen Radford, said using this faster screening technique to find new immunotherapy targets meant a treatment could be available sooner.

“Immunotherapy for breast cancer relies on identifying cancer-specific proteins but very few of these proteins have been identified because it can take many years to test just one protein,” Dr Radford said.

“We have a library of 2000 breast cancer genes ready to screen simultaneously once our technique is refined and we have reason to be hopeful that some of these show great promise as immunotherapy targets.”

While still in the early stages, Dr Radford said they would use any new proteins they discovered to develop a dendritic cell vaccine for breast cancer.

“MMRI focuses on developing treatments which teach the body to heal itself, with little to no side effects for patients.

“The more proteins we identify, the more effective a vaccine will be. Ultimately, we would like to develop a treatment that is highly personalised for each patient and attacks multiple proteins in one treatment.”

The treatment would initially be offered to patients with late stage disease and if successful could be given to patients following surgery to prevent the cancer recurring.

Dendritic cells (specialised white blood cells found in the bone marrow) were discovered by the director of MMRI, Professor Derek Hart. MMRI researchers are currently working on 17 dendritic cell research projects including a world-first clinical trial using a mature dendritic cell vaccine for prostate cancer (launched in February 2006) and advanced research on treatments for multiple myeloma and acute lymphoblastic leukaemia patients who relapse after a bone marrow transplant.

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