Stories

Research is the best hope against cancer and Cancer Research Trust New Zealand needs help to help get cancer on the run by supporting innovative research projects.

​The Cancer Research Trust NZ has just announced almost $650,00 across 15 grants to initiate and accelerate further ground-breaking cancer research in New Zealand.

Obesity has been shown to be a major risk factor in the development of bowel cancer as well as oesophagus, pancreas, liver, uterus, breast and kidney cancers – and evidence also shows that obese cancer patients often have a poorer survival rate than normal weight patients and some do not respond as well to chemotherapy.

Supported by the Cancer Research Trust NZ, Gabi, Research Associate Professor at the University of Otago Christchurch campus, is studying kidney cancer to try and understand whether saturating tumours with Vitamin C could disrupt the low oxygen environment where cancers can thrive.

New Zealand has one of the highest incidences of bowel cancer in the world. Each year about 3,000 people are diagnosed with the disease and more than 1,200 will die. Bowel cancer is the second highest cause of cancer death in New Zealand, but it can be treated successfully if it is detected and treated early.

​​​“I always wanted to be a doctor. I always wanted to work with children,” says paediatric oncologist, Dr Andrew Dodgshun. “It’s what I’m meant to do.”

“The satisfaction from those eight years’ experience in community and hospital diagnostic laboratories spurred me to do more to help patients and make a positive contribution to biomedical research." - Khine Thida

​Harnessing and boosting the power of a patient’s own immune system to fight cancer is a developing area of research.

Bowel cancer is (generally) a disease of the elderly, and our population is aging. It is known that excess body weight raises the risk of getting bowel cancer, and the rate of obesity is increasing worldwide.

​It is well established that some bacteria are more damaging to tumours than they are to healthy human cells. These microbes hold great promise for cancer treatment.

​Stem cells are generally viewed in a positive light. They are the basic cellular building blocks of the body with the ability to divide and develop into diverse specialised tissue types like kidney, liver, heart and brain.

We talk to Dr Aniruddha Chatterje about the search for the biological markers to switch genes on and off to help predict the risk of cancer spreading and whether it will respond to drug treatment

Two New Zealanders, who completed their PhDs with funding from the Cancer Research Trust, are members of a joint team from Auckland and Stanford Universities to gain funding that will help accelerate the commercialization of their innovative breast cancer therapy.

Research is the best hope against cancer and Cancer Research Trust New Zealand is inviting applications to help get cancer on the run by supporting innovative research projects.

In New Zealand, the number of people diagnosed with cancer has been growing, but deaths caused by cancer have been steadily decreasing. Some cancers that were once uniformly fatal, such as testicular cancer, are now cured in nearly all cases.

Every year for the last fifty years, lung cancer has killed more New Zealanders than any other cancer. Lung cancer has killed more Kiwis than breast cancer, prostate cancer and melanoma combined.

Life expectancy of New Zealanders continues to increase, and between 1985 and 2006 it rose by nearly seven years for men.

Finding new uses for everyday medicines to ease troublesome side effects of chemotherapy and radiation therapy has the potential to save lives and dollars, says Dr Michael Jameson. "We’re looking at how to teach old drugs new tricks.”

We should all eat plenty of vegetables as part of a healthy diet. For many cancer survivors, this is even more important, particularly for those who have been treated for bladder cancer, because beneficial molecules from certain vegetables can help prevent the cancer recurring.

Dr Weinkove says, “I had read about the Cancer Immunotherapy Research Group at Wellington’s Malaghan Institute. It was clear that this group is at the forefront of immunotherapy research so I made the decision to move to New Zealand.

Providing for the social, spiritual and medical needs of people in the end stage of life is known as palliative care.

Dr Robert Weinkove is working to establish New Zealand’s first clinical trial of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cells. This exciting technology involves modifying patients’ immune cells in the laboratory, to ‘re-direct’ them against malignant cells, then growing these modified cells in the lab, before returning them to a patient.

Virologist Professor Vernon Ward and immunologists Professor Margaret Baird and Dr Sarah Young at the University of Otago have been developing a new therapy for cancer.

New Zealand doctors are currently conducting one of the world’s largest studies on the effect of timing of radiotherapy to treat early breast cancer.

There’s been another shot over the bow on the cost of new cancer drugs and treatments being out of the reach of ordinary New Zealanders, but there is hope.

​Zebrafish are an unlikely hero in the field of cancer research. They grow to 6.4cm, live for around 5 years, produce 300-500 eggs per spawning and have had their gene codes completely mapped. Zebrafish have even flown in space.

Whether you loved it or hated it, New Zealand’s free school milk was good for us! A recent study has found that drinking milk early in life helps protect us against bowel cancer in adulthood.

Even small Cancer Research Trust grants can lead to important advances in the fight against cancer. For example, the $2,450 Professional Development Award granted to Dr Patries Herst has led to the pilot study of a skin dressing which appears to reduce radiation-induced skin reactions.

Cancer Immunologist, Associate Professor Roslyn Kemp has a big goal: to find the most effective cancer treatment for each individual cancer patient.

​Auckland Oncologist Dr Ben Lawrence has just returned from two years at Yale University in the USA, supported by a Murray Jackson Clinical Fellowship provided by the Cancer Research Trust.

​We all know the effects of pulling off a well-stuck band aid – pain and skin inflammation. But one of these negative effects is being put to good use by researchers at Wellington’s Malaghan Institute of Medical Research, who are working on ways to harness the body’s own immune system to fight skin cancer.

One of Cancer Research Trust NZ’s leading cancer researchers, Dr Michael Jameson is this year’s winner of the prestigious NZ Society for Oncology Translational Research Award.

​Caring for people during the final period of their lives, whether at home or in a hospice, has become a recognised medical specialty. After all, these are people with very different pain relief and support therapy needs, compared with other patients.

​The diagnosis and treatment of cancer of cancer is a trip into the unknown we would all rather avoid. If the journey has to be made, knowing what lies ahead can help get you through.

​Cancer Research Trust NZ has received 50 funding proposals from some of New Zealand’s best minds in cancer innovation in its latest grant round.

It’s widely known that excess bodyweight raises the risk of bowel cancer, and that the rate of obesity is increasing worldwide. However, the effect of obesity on cancer survival is unclear. Some studies have reported a decrease in the survival of obese patients with bowel cancer, while others have not.

​The ability to advance medicine by making connections between seemingly unrelated observations is the mark of a gifted scientist.

​New Zealand has one of the highest incidence of melanoma in the world, but if detected early, removing the melanoma from the skin is usually all that’s needed to stop the disease in its tracks.

​Rain, or rather the lack of it, was the force behind the formation of the Cancer Research Trust.