Cancer breakthrough

Supercharged attack on breast tumours

MELBOURNE researchers have shown they can “supercharge” treatment for aggressive types of breast cancer in the laboratory, raising expectations they can improve patient outcomes.

By combining a drug that blocks a protein keeping cancer cells alive with standard treatment, the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute team were excited to discover they could destroy tumours more effectively than drugs currently used.

One in three women with the disease had triple negative and HER2-positive breast cancer, WEHI’s Geoff Lindeman said.

An oncologist at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Professor Lindeman knows these cancers can be aggressive and hard to treat.

“While we do see patients with these cancers having good responses to chemotherapy and drugs like Herceptin, sometimes treatment is not as effective as we would like, and tumours can recur,” he said.

“What’s exciting is that this combination offers a more effective way of killing tumour cells to potentially deliver better outcomes for women with breast cancer in the long term.”

The drug was tested on lab- oratory models of breast cancer using samples donated by patients and provided by the Victorian Cancer Biobank.

These are crucial because they help scientists mimic how cancer cells respond to drugs in preclinical studies.

The drug, an anti-cancer compound called S63845 developed by French pharmaceutical company Servier, targets a protein called MCL-1.

WEHI scientists previously showed a protein called MCL-1 could sustain the survival of cancerous cells, allowing them to resist cancer drugs.

The Melbourne institute also discovered the family of proteins to which it belongs played a major role in cancer survival almost 30 years ago.

Rather than being a stand alone treatment, the best results were achieved by combining the drug with standard therapies: chemotherapy and Herceptin.

The clinical version of this drug is being trialled in patients in Melbourne for leukaemia, to test its safety and possible efficacy.

“It’s early days yet, but we are hoping that this drug will move into clinical trials for breast cancer over the next few years,” Prof Lindeman said.

The team led by Delphine Merino, James Whittle, François Vaillant and Jane Visvader had their findings published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.