Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research researcher Associate Professor Oliver Rackham has come up with a new way to treat cancer.
Camera IconHarry Perkins Institute of Medical Research researcher Associate Professor Oliver Rackham has come up with a new way to treat cancer. Credit: Ross Swanborough/ The Sunday Times

Harry Perkins Institute researchers find fresh way to combat cancer

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SCIENTISTS at Perth’s Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research have discovered a new weapon in the fight against 90 per cent of cancers.

Associate Professor Oliver Rackham, the institute’s head of the synthetic biology and drug discovery laboratory, said they had found a way to block the uncontrolled growth that occurs with most cancers.

The four-year research project developed artificial proteins that wrap around the end of chromosomes in cancer cells.

The breakthrough has the potential to be effective against cancers that include bladder, liver, melanoma, thyroid, ovarian, neck, sarcoma, mesothelioma and some brain tumours.

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“This is a new way to attack cancer. We’re pretty excited about this discovery,” Dr Rackham said.

The Cancer Council WA research fellow said normal cells grow for just the right amount of time required to develop and maintain a healthy body.

“They control their growth with a molecular counting mechanism that tells the cell how old it is,” he said.

“This occurs on the ends of our chromosomes which have little caps on them. Each time the cell divides, a little bit at the cap of the chromosome disappears. Once the caps shrink to a certain length, the cell knows it has divided too many times and it will then stop growing or die.”

Cancer cells avoid that counting mechanism by producing an enzyme, called telomerase, that is needed for rapid body growth.

Dr Rackham said 90 per cent of cancer cells had the telomerase enzyme, which extends the ends of the single strands of the DNA.

The Perth-based institute successfully engineered proteins that clamp tightly around the end of the single-stranded DNA in the chromosome.

“Our laboratory designed proteins that, for the first time, can actually recognise the single stranded DNA and bind it. We can basically program these proteins to target them. These proteins lock down the DNA so telomerase can’t touch it,” Dr Rackham said. “Previously, scientists haven’t been able to target the single stranded DNA.

“The cancerous cells are being turned back into normal cells so they can control themselves.”

He said cancers that didn’t have the telomerase enzyme, and therefore wouldn’t respond well to this type of treatment, included breast and lung cancers.

Dr Rackham said the team would now work towards the pre-clinical trial phase, with the aim of human clinical trials within about five years.

The project has been a collaboration with researchers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Cologne and the Children’s Medical Research Institute in Sydney.

It has been reviewed by leading international scientists and recently published in the international journal Nature Communications.