New tools to help cancer researchers

Australian researchers hope to create more specialised cancer treatments with fewer side effects using high-tech equipment.

Professor Michael Parker, of the newly opened Rational Drug Discovery Centre, said the new technologies will hopefully help researchers develop more sophisticated drugs that spare cancer patients the toxic side effects of treatments such as chemotherapy.

'If we can turn molecules into drugs, they'll only hit the protein we're interested in ... so we shouldn't have side effects,' he said.

The new machines include a robot that creates protein crystals that can be virtually mapped, as well as instruments to test how potential drugs bind to cancer-causing proteins.

In an Australian first, there is also a laser scanning cytometer which lets researchers study cancer drug prototypes within the body.

Researchers at the new centre, based at Melbourne's St Vincent's Institute, will create three-dimensional images of cancer-spreading proteins.

Until recently, computerised images were not detailed enough and researchers were forced to rely more heavily on trial and error when testing drugs.

'This is sort of information we need to go to pharmaceutical companies to develop them into drugs that go into clinical trials,' Professor Parker said.

While Lilydale man Steve Harris underwent chemotherapy for an acute form of leukaemia, the 48-year-old said improved cancer therapies meant he was spared a bone marrow transplant.

'It's not just the survival rate that research adds to the equation, it's the impact of the treatment,' he said.

Here is the original post:
New tools to help cancer researchers