In a promising new development, scientists working tirelessly at the Centre for Cancer Biology (CCB) have identified that high levels of a protein called ‘quaking’ contributes to the poor outlook for prostate cancer tumours that have become resistant to chemotherapy and other treatments.
They have also found this quaking protein is higher in patients with prostate cancer which spreads to other parts of the body, becoming more difficult to treat.
Dr Philip Gregory and Professor Greg Goodall are thrilled to have made this finding, made possible through funding provided by Australian Prostate Cancer as part of The Hospital Research Foundation Group.
“We’ve made really good progress in our research since securing funding earlier in 2018,” Dr Gregory explained.
“We screened a very large cohort of prostate cancer patients, in collaboration with colleagues in Canada, finding exactly what we had hoped – that high levels of this protein do indeed correlate with a bad prognosis for prostate cancer and the spread of this disease.
“This now means we can start our work in developing models where we can manipulate this protein and look at its effect on cancer cells in the hope to lead to new treatments for aggressive, hard to treat prostate cancer.”
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