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Current drug treatments for cancer tumours are reasonably succesful at destroying tumour cells
and the treated tumour shrinks. Unfortunately that's not the whole story.
Inside tumours are cancer stem cells. Unless they are destroyed these stem cells will act as seeds.
Allowing the tumour to grow back.
And often tougher and more resistant to treatment.
Led by Professor Arunasalam Dharmarajan, researchers from Curtin's school of Biomedical sciences
are working on a series of peptides that are proving effective at killing not only
tumour cells but cancer stem cells as well.
This new approach to treatment disrupts a cell signalling pathway that's critical
to the cancer cell's growth and survival.
In laboratory tests carried out on stem cells isolated from Glioblastoma - an aggressive,
difficult to treat brain tumour - the new treatment was just as effective in reducing
the tumour cells as the standard of care chemotherapy drug.
A promising result in itself but the peptides have other significant advantages.
They also killed the cancer stem cells -- crucial to preventing reoccurrence.
The real breakthrough came when the peptides were combined with the current
standard of care drugs. The combination was more than twice as effective in reducing
the tumour's size.
A remarkable result.
Because this new approach targets a mechanism believed common to many tumours, it
has the potential to be just as effective in other cancer types.
Laboratory testing is underway for head and neck, breast, prostate and ovarian cancers.
Further more as the peptides are derived
from a naturally occurring protein they're expected to be less toxic to healthy cells.
The need and potential for this drug treatment is huge. In the US this year alone, 1.6 million people
will be diagnosed with cancer.
And the current global cancer therapy market is worth more than $69 billion dollars.
It's a long process from where we are now to the point where we have a new cancer treatment
on the shelves but, we believe, it's worth the journey.
We are looking to partner with biopharmaceutical company to progress our drug
development program.