The Foundation is excited to share an update from A/Prof. Pilar Blancafort, Program Head of Cancer Genetics at The Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research. Prof. Blancafort’s research is funded by the Foundation through a 2019 Brain and Breast Collaborative Grant, worth $446,227.
Cure Brain Cancer Foundation and the National Breast Cancer Foundation came together to jointly fund high impact translational research to improve survival for people diagnosed with both primary brain cancer and breast cancers.
The research team, led by A/Prof. Pilar Blancafort and Prof. Anna Nowak, aim to use gene-editing technology to modify the genes which repair the damage done to glioblastoma cells following treatments such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy. This repair results in treatment resistance. By switching these genes off, it is hoped patients will respond stronger to treatment.
In their latest update, A/Prof. Blancafort and her team have shown that by adding certain reversible chemical tags, they can turn off those specific genes that allow cancer cells to become resistant. By doing so, this may open a path to re-sensitizing cancer cells to currently existing treatments. In addition, A/Prof. Blancafort and her team have also engineered a new delivery system to target those genes directly without changing the patients DNA.
“Our progress in this project will impact people living with brain cancer in a positive way as we have developed targeted therapeutics that with continued refinement and improvement will allow existing treatments to become more effective, and possibly open up new treatments altogether.”
