GLASGOW scientists are to receive more than £1.7 million from Cancer Research UK to investigate both the root causes of cancer and how treatments can be improved.
Professor Stephen Tait, who is based at the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute and Glasgow University, will receive £1.65m to investigate what causes cancer cells to grow out of control and form tumours.
His research will focus on pancreatic and bowel cancer in particular.
The charity will also provide funding of £99,000 to Dr Conchita Vens, of the Wolfson Wohl Cancer Centre at Glasgow University, to explore how to overcome cancers which are resistant to radiotherapy.
In Scotland, around 32,400 people are diagnosed with cancer every year and one in two people in the UK will be diagnosed with cancer at some stage in their lives.
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Professor Tait’s research will explore how cancer cells can cheat death by getting round something known as the ‘kill switch’ mechanism - a powerful way of stopping tumours from growing.
A spokesman said: “The discovery of this ‘kill switch’ has sparked the development of a new class of anti-cancer drugs, called BH3-mimetics, which directly target this mechanism in different cancers types - effectively forcing the malignant cells to self-destruct, while protecting healthy surrounding tissue.
“However, some researchers have found that the ‘kill switch’ mechanism can help cancer grow if the mechanism is either not fully activated or if the cancer cells find a way to tell nearby cells to keep growing and so reduce the effectiveness of cancer treatments.”
Professor Tait’s team will explore this possibility further in the lab to see how pancreatic and bowel cancer cells survive activation of the ‘kill switch’ mechanism and explore a new method for removing surviving cancer cells.
It comes after a research team led by Prof Tait at the Beatson Institute in Glasgow demonstrated that BH3-mimetics drugs could be used to destroy cancer stem cells grown from patients with an aggressive form of brain tumour.
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The drugs are currently in clinical trials for patients who have blood and bone marrow cancers but not for those with brain tumours.
Speaking at the time, Prof Tait said the findings were exciting because the drugs “appear to be very effective at causing cell death in glioblastoma while not harming normal brain tissue”.
Dr Conchita Vens’ research will focus on these glioblastoma tumours, which mainly occur in the brain and are currently difficult to treat.
Cancer Research UK said finding new ways to tackle brain tumours is a “key priority” for the charity.
Around 450 people are diagnosed with malignant brain tumours in Scotland every year, and every year around 390 people in Scotland die from the disease.
Around one in 10 (9%) of people with a brain tumour survive for five years or more after diagnosis.
Currently, people with glioblastoma are treated with surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
Radiotherapy, combined with drugs like temozolomide, is the most common treatment option.
However, not all patients can benefit from these drugs and brain tumours often return after treatment.
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Dr Vens’ team, in collaboration with Professor Anthony Chalmers, will explore PARP inhibitors – a type of drug which stops cancer cells from repairing damage to their DNA caused by radiotherapy.
PARP inhibitors have been shown to make radiotherapy more effective, under certain conditions, in treating glioblastoma. However, low levels of oxygen in brain tumours can stop radiotherapy, or drugs like PARP inhibitors from working well.
To overcome this barrier, the team will combine radiotherapy with PARP inhibitors and drugs that can reverse low oxygen.
They will test whether these drugs increase oxygen levels in glioblastoma and determine how effective this combination is.
If successful, the team hope new drug combinations can be tested in clinical trials with the aim of improving glioblastoma treatment.
Dr Vens’ team will work with researchers in Oxford and Manchester.
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