Bowel and breast cancer treatment might change if researchers can identify how to stop the chemicals that cause such diseases to spread.
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A team at UniSA and SA Pathology's Centre for Cancer Biology have received a cumulative $1.3 million for research into these two types of cancers, plus acute myeloid leukaemia, particularly in children.
A team led by CCB scientist Professor Michael Samuel will investigate why people diagnosed with early-onset bowel cancer have a 50 per cent chance of relapsing after surgery to remove the primary tumour.
Compared with people diagnosed with late-onset bowel cancers, it is also more likely that the cancer will spread to other organs.
Professor Samuel said it cannot be predicted whose tumours will return and whose won't, resulting in some patients receiving unnecessary chemotherapy and others who choose not to, leading to relapse.
But chemicals chemicals produced by tumours that affect the chances of cancer relapse have been identified.
"If we can block these enzymes from hijacking normal cells in their environment, this could be a new way of targeting bowel cancer," he said.
Professor Samuel's team was awarded $573,833 for this project.
Research Fellow Dr Sarah Boyle is looking at a new way of tackling the spread of breast cancer and improving patient outcomes.
Metastatic breast cancer is when breast cancer has spread to other parts of the body. It is the most common cause of cancer-related death in women, influenced by changes to the area surrounding the breast cancer.
This is influenced by rogue chemicals released from cancers as they grow.
Dr Boyle said beast cancer cells release chemicals that act on normal cells in their environment, which aid the cancer to spread to other organs. The project will focus on finding a way to block these chemicals that change the environment, to stop breast cancer metastasis from happening.
She was awarded $199,883 from Cancer Australia and the Can Too Foundation for the research.
Researcher Professor Richard D'Andrea is looking at genetic changes and medicine for children with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML).
About 30 per cent of children who undergo chemotherapy for the disease die.
Professor D'Andrea said it is known that genes can affect people's risk of developing AML and influence their response to treatment. But despite this, guidelines for doctors on how to best treat the disease in children based on their genes are lacking, which could lead to less-than-ideal outcomes in some patients.
His research will address this gap by establishing new guidelines to address this, and by getting better at diagnosis and predicting how someone's individual genes could influence the disease, leading to better treatments.
He will use a $599,392 grant from Cancer Australia for this project.
