ADVANCES in DNA technology are giving cancer experts their best hope in a generation of improving treatments for brain cancer which, although rare, remains one of the least understood and most deadly of all malignancies. A five-year study of Australian brain cancer patients is gathering steam. It aims to detect genetic markers linked to better prognoses, and environmental factors that may worsen outcomes.
The work involves taking blood samples from patients who have had brain cancer, also known as glioma, finding out if any family members have suffered from the disease, and tracing the patients' treatment and response to it.
Once it's clear which patients are faring well and which are doing less well, their DNA profiles will be compared against a genomic database in Western Australia.
Experts are excited about the research, the Australian Genomics and Clinical Outcomes of High-Grade Glioma study, as it relies on DNA analysis techniques that until recently would have been unsustainable in terms of time and money.
This brightness on the horizon hasn't come before time.
Five-year survival for those diagnosed with brain cancer is one of the lowest in Australia at just 19 per cent, beaten only by lung cancer (12 per cent), pancreatic cancer (4.6 per cent) and cancers that have already spread through the body leaving doctors in the dark about the original source (9.1 per cent).
Yet treatments for glioma have barely improved in 30 years, partly as few patients survive long enough to provide insights into causes and therapies. Also, in contrast to other cancers such as breast cancer, few glioma patients remain well enough to advocate for more research funds.
That's starting to change with the launch by federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon this week of Australia's first Brain Cancer Action Week, an initiative of Cancer Council NSW.
Four widows of prominent Australians claimed by high-grade glioma lent their support to the launch, including Sue Dale, whose husband Matt Price died in November 2007.
Price, who had endeared himself to readers and even the subjects of his acerbic yet warmly witty columns as The Australian's parliamentary sketch writer, survived for just seven weeks after he was diagnosed with HGG.
Another of the four widows, Gail O'Brien, whose cancer surgeon husband Chris O'Brien died in June last year, said Australia was "still too dependent on the US" for work on HGG, as demonstrated when samples of her husband's tumour had to be sent to California for advanced testing.
"It got caught up with patent issues in California and it wasn't tested," she said. "Would Chris still be alive today if it had been? I don't know."
Medical oncologist Helen Wheeler, who treated O'Brien during his illness and is involved with AGOG, said preliminary results from Europe and the US suggested a cluster of genes acting together might increase the risk of brain cancer.
But the interplay was complex and it's unlikely that glioma could be inherited, unlike breast cancer where an estimated 10 per cent of cases are linked to a single gene.
"By unravelling this, we will be able to look at what this complex of genes does, and the environmental factors that exacerbate the risk, and treatments that could be developed," Wheeler said.
"We are hoping this project will roll out eventually throughout Australia. It's incredibly important we have local data that can contribute to all these international studies that are going on."
No comments:
Post a Comment