A world-first human trial of a new drug has shown promising results in shrinking the most common type of skin cancer, basal-cell carcinoma.

The treatment targets a key gene, the “c-jun” gene, which is present in all of us and when overactive, it can lead to skin cancers and other conditions including macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy.

“It’s a pivotal growth gene, or survival gene,” said Professor Khachigian from the University of NSW.

“We don’t always know why it gets switched on, except in basal-cell carcinomas where we know sunlight turns it on.”

But this new drug treatment, called Dz13, has shown it can not only shrink the cancers triggered by this gene, but encourage the body’s own immune system to join the fight.

Cancer scientists at the prestigious Children’s Cancer Institute Australia (CCIA) have discovered that an existing drug being trialled for adult cancer treatment also has the potential to treat children who relapse from acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), one of the most common types of paediatric blood cancers.

The current survival rate for children diagnosed with the ALL is 80 per cent, however if a child relapses this survival rate decreases to just 20 per cent.

“What is so exciting about this drug is it has the potential to not only improve the survival rate of children who have relapsed but, since it acts as a ‘magic bullet’, it only targets the cancer cells, leaving the healthy cells untouched!” explains Professor Lock, Head of the Leukaemia Biology Program at CCIA.

Dr David Ziegler, paediatric oncologist with the Sydney Children’s Hospital, said “Our patients and their parents can’t afford to wait years to have new treatments developed. We plan to start a clinical trial of this new therapy for children with leukaemia by the end of this year.”

Researchers at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) Melbourne have played a key role in developing a novel chemical compound which blocks a protein that has been linked to poor treatment responses in cancer patients.

The development of this compound is an important step towards designing a potential new anti-cancer agent, which will help to significantly reduce resistance to therapy.

The compound targets the function of a protein which prevents cells from dying.

Cell death is an important safeguard against cancer development, but once cancer cells start growing, they can produce high levels of this protein which prevents this natural process. This also reduces the effectiveness of chemotherapy and other anti-cancer treatments, and has been associated particularly with poorer outcomes in patients with lung, stomach, colon and pancreatic cancer.

Dr Guillaume Lessen (pictured) who co-led the study, together with Prof. Keith Watson and Prof. David Huang from the ACRF Chemical Biology Division at WEHI and colleagues Dr Peter Czabotar and Prof. Peter Colman, said:

“We were very excited to see the team’s work culminate in a compound that specifically inhibits the protein.”

Researchers have reported an incredible 93% drop in genital wart diagnoses (symptoms of the human papillomavirus) in young women who have received the HPV, or cervical cancer, vaccine.

The vaccine, co-created by Professor Ian Frazer AC (whose research was supported by an early ACRF seed-funding grant), became available for Australian girls in 2007.

The study, which was conducted by researchers at the University of NSW and the University of Melbourne together with both the Sydney and Melbourne Centres of Sexual Health, looked at the medical data of 85,770 patients during pre-vaccination period (2004-2007) compared to the vaccination period (2007-2011).

Researchers at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research have run early studies of a new combination of treatments for breast cancer, with 100% success rate.

The treatment targets late-stage triple negative breast cancers, for which the average survival rate is only 12 months. This type of cancer is most common in young women and accounts for approximately 20% of breast cancer cases in Australia.

Unlike other cancer cells, triple negative breast cancers don’t have any of the three usual surface receptors, which would normally be the target of treatment.

But this latest treatment trial shows that targeting radiation specifically to an overload of proteins (known as EGFR) together with a dramatically reduced dose of chemotherapy is effective in stopping both the cancer growth, and its recurrence.