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24/08/10
A desire to understand how breast cancer starts has seen Walter and Eliza Hall Institute researcher Dr Marie-Liesse Asselin-Labat today win one of three 2010 L’Oreal Australia For Women in Science Fellowships.
Dr Asselin-Labat, a senior postdoctoral fellow in the institute’s Stem Cells and Cancer Division, is rapidly establishing an international profile for her studies of how breast stem cells develop and how these cells are influenced by oestrogen and other steroids.
In 2006 she was part of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute team that discovered breast stem cells – a discovery that represented a major shift in the way scientists thought breast cancer developed.
Breast stem cells are critical to normal breast development, but if the breast becomes cancerous the stem cells are likely to be contributing to the problem. Dr Asselin-Labat has been meticulously unravelling how and why. In a series of high-impact scientific papers she has revealed how these breast stem cells develop into the wide range of cells found in a normal breast and how some cells are more likely to become aggressive cancer cells.
In March this year she was the first author on a Nature paper revealing that oestrogen and other steroids can control the function of breast stem cells.
“We found out how oestrogen and other steroids can influence mammary stem cells. It’s via an indirect mechanism important in understanding how stem cells proliferate, and it could lead to new treatments for breast cancer,” she said.
Dr Asselin-Labat now hopes to find out more about how breast cancer progresses and why breast cancer sometimes returns. “I want to understand how the cells metastasise. How do they migrate from the breast?”
Dr Asselin-Labat said she would use the $20,000 L’Oreal Fellowship to fund some technical help in the laboratory and pay her two young sons’ childcare expenses. “The fellowship is a great honour and will help me maintain my work-life balance with my two boys,” Dr Asselin-Labat said. “It will allow me to employ a laboratory assistant to maintain the team’s productivity, it will help with childcare costs, and will support my participation in leadership training.”
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute scientists have now received L’Oreal Australia For Women in Science Fellowships three years running. Dr Marnie Blewitt received a fellowship in 2009 for her research on epigenetics while Dr Erika Cretney won in 2008 for her studies of the immune system.
Dr Asselin-Labat’s research is funded by the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council.
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15/08/10
Inflammation-causing cells in fat tissue may explain the link between obesity and diabetes, a team of Walter and Eliza Hall Institute researchers has shown.
The discovery, by Professor Len Harrison and Dr John Wentworth from the institute’s Autoimmunity and Transplantation division, opens the way for new anti-inflammatory treatments that prevent insulin resistance (where the body is unable to respond to and use the insulin it produces) and other complications associated with obesity.
“We have shown that insulin resistance in human obesity is closely related to the presence of inflammatory cells in fat tissue, in particular a population of macrophage cells,” Professor Harrison said.
Macrophages, white blood cells derived from the bone marrow, are immune cells that normally respond to infections. In obese people, macrophages move into the fat tissue where they cause inflammation and release cytokines, which are chemical messenger molecules used by immune cells to communicate. Certain cytokines cause cells to become resistant to the effects of the hormone insulin, leading to diabetes and heart disease.
Professor Harrison and Dr Wentworth worked with Mr Gaetano Naselli, Ms Belinda Phipson and Dr Gordon Smyth at the institute as well as Professor Paul O’Brien at Monash University’s Centre for Obesity Research and Education to analyse the fat tissue of more than 100 Victorians who had undergone lapband surgery.
Their findings, published in the journal Diabetes, provide the first evidence in humans that macrophages in the fat tissue are producing cytokines that prevent cells from appropriately responding to the presence of insulin.
“The complications of obesity such as insulin resistance and diabetes, cardiovascular disease associated with hardening of the arteries, and liver problems are the result of inflammation that occurs in the fat tissue,” Professor Harrison said. “These complications could be prevented by developing drugs that target certain cytokines released by the macrophages.
“Encouragingly, our study also showed that when obese people lost weight the macrophages in the fat tissue disappeared, as did the risk of developing insulin resistance and diabetes.”
Diabetes affects more than a million Australians and is a disease in which the body does not produce or properly use insulin, a hormone necessary to convert sugar, starches and other food into the energy needed for daily life.
The research was supported by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, the Victorian Government, Diabetes Australia Research Trust and the Royal Australasian College of Physicians Research and Education Foundation.
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03/08/10
The development at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of a new class of anti-cancer drugs called BH3 mimetics and a project that collects information on rare cancers have received funding in this year’s round of Victorian Cancer Agency (VCA) grants.
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, which act by directly killing cancer cells.
“Cancers of the blood such as leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma are the third most common cause of cancer death in Victoria,” Dr Mason said. “Current therapies are inadequate so new treatment approaches are needed.
“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. With a combination of integrated clinical trials and laboratory studies I aim to optimise the potential of these exciting agents for cancer treatment.”
Dr Clare Scott, a laboratory head in the institute’s Molecular Genetics of Cancer division and a medical oncologist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, has received a $50,000 VCA Consumer Research Grant to further develop CART-WHEEL.org.
CART-WHEEL.org, the Centre of Analysis of Rare Tumors, is the first international, ethically-approved web portal coordinating patient information, research studies and clinical trials for rare cancers.
“Rare cancers account for up to 20 percent of cancers diagnosed each year and 31 percent of cancer-related deaths,” Dr Scott said. “There are more than 500 types of rare tumour so a significant group of any one tumour type will not exist at any single medical institution. This means there are limited opportunities for basic research and, because of the limited number of patients, clinical trials are infrequent and often uninformative.
“Many patients with rare tumours have few treatment choices,” Dr Scott said. “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.
“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.”
The director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Professor Doug Hilton, said the research being pursued by Drs Mason and Scott had immense potential to improve the lives of people with cancer and reflected the priorities of the Victorian Government’s Cancer Action Plan.
“As the proportion of older people increases in the Australian population, cancer incidence is also going to increase,” he said. “The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute has a long history of making discoveries that improve the lives of people with cancer, starting with Don Metcalf’s discovery of the colony stimulating factors which has now helped more than 10 million cancer patients in their recovery from chemotherapy. Our scientists are continuing to make important discoveries and the work of Kylie and Clare is an important part of our ongoing cancer research program.”
For further information
Penny Fannin
Strategic Communications Manager
Ph: +61 3 9345 2345
Mob: 0417 125 700
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