Research & funding Cutting edge research
Grant schemes and deadlines
Breast Cancer Campaign’s Scientific Advisory Board will meet in November 2011 to consider the following awards:
PROJECT GRANTS
Application deadline: 1 July 2011 for funding in November 2011
Project grants are available to support innovative research into breast cancer with grants in the region of £65,000 per annum for up to three years.
PHD STUDENTSHIP GRANTS
Application deadline: 1 July 2011 for funding in November 2011
PhD studentship grants are designed to attract and retain the most talented young scientists into breast cancer research with an average cost of £90,000 for three years.
PILOT GRANTS
Application deadline: September 2011 for funding in November 2011
Pilot grants allow established scientists to investigate and develop new ideas in breast cancer research. Funding is worth up to £20,000 for a maximum of one year.
Dr Helen McCarthy
Gene fuelled transporter causes breast cancer cells to self-destruct
Dr Helen McCarthy, at Queen’s University Belfast, has shown that a gene can be delivered directly into breast cancer cells causing them to self-destruct, using an innovative, minuscule gene transport system called a Designer Biomimetic Vector (DBV). A major stumbling block to using gene
therapy in the past has been the lack of an effective delivery system. Dr McCarthy packaged a gene called iNOS into a nanoparticle 400 times smaller than the width of a human hair, allowing it to be delivered straight into laboratory grown breast cancer cells.
iNOS is targeted specifically to breast cancer cells using the DBV where it forces the cells to produce poisonous nitric oxide – either killing the cells outright or making them more vulnerable to being destroyed by chemotherapy and radiotherapy. As this approach leaves normal healthy breast cells unaffected, it would overcome many of the toxic side effects of current treatments. Combining the DBV with the iNOS gene has
proved successful in killing breast cancer cells in the laboratory. In the long term it could be used to treat people with metastatic breast cancer that has spread to the bones, ideally administered before radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Further investigation is needed but it could be trialled in patients in as little as five years.
4 focus June-September 2011 Dr Janine Erler
Key enzyme can stop breast cancer spread
Published in the online journal Cancer Research, Dr Janine Erler and her team at the Institute of Cancer Research showed that blocking a key enzyme can stop breast cancer spreading to other parts of the body. The researchers found that the enzyme lysyl
oxidase-like 2 (LOXL2) is needed for tumour cells to escape from the breast and invade surrounding tissue, thereby allowing cancer cells to travel to distant organs. LOXL2 promotes this process by controlling the amounts of molecules called TIMP1 and MMP9, which have previously been shown to play key roles in allowing cancer to spread.
‘A drug designed to block LOXL2 could potentially be used to treat women with advanced breast cancer’
Importantly, the team showed that blocking the function of LOXL2 decreased the spread of the cancer from the breast to the lungs, liver and bone. These findings confirm that a drug designed to block LOXL2 could potentially be used to treat women with advanced breast cancer. This is vital, as most of the 12,000 women who die from breast cancer in the UK each year, do so because the cancer has spread to other parts of their body. It is therefore imperative that new therapies to treat patients with highly aggressive breast cancer are developed.
Results from Campaign funded research projects
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