A novel drug therapy which could potentially be used to treat ovarian cancer — among other types of cancer — is being developed by Queensland researchers.
A team of researchers at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute have found the drug therapy kills tumour cells, while not harming normal cells.
The pre-clinical research published in the American Association for Cancer Research journal, showed the drug therapy inhibited specific proteins in model human tumour cells, allowing an increase in another protein, known as IL24, which kills the tumour cells.
The research lead at QIMR, Associate Professor Jason Lee, said the team was "particularly excited" because, if successful, the drug therapy could potentially be used to treat ovarian, breast and melanoma cancer.
One Australian woman dies of ovarian cancer every eight hours, with only 29 per cent of women diagnosed at a late stage surviving more than five years, according to the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation.
Often the only signs include feeling full, bloating, cramps or needing to urinate more frequently, which are similar to symptoms of many other conditions.
With no test or method of detecting ovarian cancer, the most lethal gynaecological cancer, the only way to diagnose it is through an invasive surgical procedure.
New screening method
The researchers are also working on developing a blood test which could screen for ovarian cancer — hoping to detect the deadly disease in the early stages.
Dr Lee said the researchers were able to identify a class of "stable molecules" which are highly expressed in patients with ovarian cancer.
"So now the next step is for us is to actually move into looking at blood samples and see if we still detect the circular RNAs that are high in ovarian tumours," he said.
"It's particularly tough because … we don't have a lot of blood samples coming from early stage ovarian cancer patients, because obviously, not all patients are detected at that stage.
Researchers at the University of Queensland (UQ) are also developing a blood test to detect ovarian cancer in the early stages.
Last year the researchers said their new test detected 90 per cent of early ovarian cancers compared with 50 per cent of cases in existing tests.
