Coast leads cancer fight

better chance for patients to be cured. Some cancers, such as those affecting the ovaries and lungs, are frequently diagnosed too late for treatment to be curative. An effective blood test would be considered a major advance.

Glycomics researchers study sugar-based structures on the surface of cancer cells, known as glycans, which are essential for the cells to survive.

Professor von Itzstein said studying glycans provided a unique approach for better understanding how cancer cells worked.

“The Australian Centre for Cancer Glycomics brings together all of the amazing technology that will allow us, for the first time, to comprehensively and systematically investigate the sugar code on cancer cells,” he said.

Glycomics also offers the possibility for the development of new cancer drugs and vaccines based on targeting the sugars on the outside of tumour cells.

Prostate cancer expert Judith Clements, of QUT, will collaborate with Austrian scientist Daniel Kolarich, who has been lured to the Coast glycomics centre from Europe. They will work towards the development of a better blood test for prostate cancer.

The Australian Centre for Cancer Glycomics will be officially opened today.