THE CHALLENGE facing cancer researcher Dilys Leung is akin to a spot-the-difference puzzle, only where differences in the puzzle are also a lot like finding a needle in a haystack.
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Fiona Elsey Cancer Research Institute projects this mission can be complete within a year.
Dr Leung, a postdoctoral research fellow with FECRI is set to work through patient samples from people who have had chronic lymphocytic leukaemia. What Dr Leung aims to find could be an pivotal key in treating not just CLL but other cancers, too.
People with CLL can often have no symptoms or signs of disease, even if they develop tumours. These cancer cells can become diseased, developing a protein to evade the immune system like a fog. This can spread to the lymph nodes, liver and spleen and the patient gets sick.
By comparing before and after samples, Dr Leung is working to clear the "background noise" and try to find the trigger proteins.
"We think there is some protein that emerges and this is why people are getting so sick," Dr Leung said.
"People with CLL can walk around with bucket loads of cancer cells but be fine. It's finding the protein that triggers the sickness that's really important."'
People with CLL can walk around with bucket loads of cancer cells but be fine. It's finding the protein that triggers the sickness that's really important.
- Dr Dilys Leung
In the bigger picture, identifying this protein will help move a step closer to what FECRI honourary director George Kannourakis calls the cracking the barcode. It should help tailor immunotherapy treatment where this protein might present in other cancers.
The FECRI team will use new technology to simultaneously screen more samples and identify proteins, then work with a catalogue of antibodies that could fine-tune immunotherapy treatments.
This project has been funded for a year by an $80,000 donation from the Jim and Shirley Richards Trust.
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Jim and Shirley Richards set up a discretionary trust fund for cancer treatment or research in Ballarat.
Developments in cancer research and treatment were close to the couple's heart as Jim had throat cancer and Shirley's sister had breast cancer.
The couple lived in Wendouree and, under Shirley's will, directed the money they had accumulated over a lifetime be given back to help the Ballarat community.
FECRI has collected more than 150 samples from CLL patients the past 22 years. A previous grant from the trust funded initial stages of this study.
Upgrade to expand FECRI's tissue bank were finished last month.
FECRI scientists have been working through the pandemic. The team has had seven papers published in international journals in this time.
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