RESEARCH UPDATE. A Lifesaving Key To Beating Aggressive Breast Cancer Edition 1

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1 RESEARCH UPDATE 2018 Edition 1 A Lifesaving Key To Beating Aggressive Breast Cancer Did you know, every day in Australia approximately 50 people are diagnosed with breast cancer? Thanks to your support of lifesaving research, incredible treatment advances continue to be made and breast cancer survival rates are now at an amazing 98 per cent when the cancer remains in the breast. Sadly, nine people do lose their battle to breast cancer every day. But thanks to your ongoing support, there is hope for these women. Associate Professor Claudine Bonder, Professor Angel Lopez and their teams at the Centre for Cancer Biology are leading lifesaving research to stop the growth and spread of the most aggressive breast cancer. For the last few years we ve been working on the most difficult breast cancer to treat, triple negative breast cancer. This breast cancer is the most aggressive and invasive, which means the cancer cells can quickly access blood vessels as a highway to spread around the body, A/ Prof Bonder said. We ve identified a blood hormone that helps breast cancer to grow and spread using blood vessels and have promising data to suggest that this could act as a good target for a new treatment. While other breast cancer types currently have a targeted treatment, for patients diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer, chemotherapy proves to be the only option. Breast cancer can only grow to a certain size before it needs access to the blood supply for nutrients and oxygen. To attract a blood supply, cancer cells can either send out a chemical signal to draw in neighbouring blood vessels (a process called angiogenesis) or build their own blood vessel-like structures and create their own supply (vasculogenic mimicry). What we ve shown is this blood hormone supports both processes, helping aggressive breast cancers to grow and spread around a patient s body. Our theory is that if we can block the function of this hormone we can block the two ways which assist in the growth and spread of aggressive breast cancer. Now with this exciting knowledge, A/Prof Bonder, Prof Lopez and their teams are hopeful their discovery could lead to a new treatment for the most aggressive breast cancer affecting your community. "At the moment these patient s only treatment option is chemotherapy so our research could lead to an alternative treatment or combine a new therapy with a lower dose of chemotherapy," A/Prof Bonder said. By understanding how this blood hormone contributes to breast cancer growth, we hope to identify a distinct subgroup of breast cancer patients, diagnose them earlier and one day come up with a specific or personalised treatment for them. "We re hopeful in the next year we ll have some really solid evidence which will be what we need to work towards clinical trials. With your ongoing support, this potentially lifesaving research could go on to prevent aggressive breast cancer from devastating more women and their families. Image above: A/Prof Bonder's research could see the first targeted treatment become available for triple negative breast cancer. 1

2 What Mother's Day Means to a Breast Cancer Thriver Breast cancer thriver and mother-of-two Jenni Eyles reflects on what Mother's Day now means to her after fighting and beating the heartbreaking disease over five years ago... "Five years ago on Mother's Day I walked in a breast cancer fundraiser walk, ravaged by almost six months of chemo it was gruelling physically but emotionally EXHILARATING. Just seven months prior I had been diagnosed with invasive breast cancer and one of my first fears was for my children. All the 'what ifs' ran through my head and it made me desperately sad to think they might grow up without me. But here we are five years on and still together. Heck I'm thriving! Every Mother's Day I give thanks for research and fabulous medical care and take a moment to honour all the women taken too early and families without their Mum's." Happy Mother's Day to all our special mums out there! We also honour those who have lost the battle to breast cancer, and send love to the families left behind. With your support we are determined to continue improving treatments and finding a cure for this heartbreaking disease. You Can Help to #Forkcancer! Host a dinner with your family and friends and help save lives from cancer through The Longest Table! The official date to host your Longest Table dinner is Saturday July 21, but if that doesn t suit, you can have it anytime from now until July 31. Theme your dinner, or keep it low key, the decision is entirely yours! Most importantly you are raising funds with your friends to fight breast cancer and many other devastating cancers affecting our community. The Longest Table is The Hospital Research Foundation s annual cancer fundraiser. Australian Breast Cancer Research (ABCR) is proud to be a charitable affiliate of The Hospital Research Foundation dedicated to saving lives from breast cancer. Register to host your Longest Table by visiting: thelongesttable.com.au. 2

3 New Strategy to Beat Therapy Resistant Breast Cancer Estrogen receptor positive breast cancer is the most common breast cancer to affect our community, making up 75 per cent of all diagnoses of this devastating disease. Thanks to your support, women diagnosed with this breast cancer do have a targeted treatment available to them to help beat their disease. Unfortunately, many patients develop resistance to this targeted treatment, and without access to any other treatment options, their only option is chemotherapy. Now armed with funding from ABCR thanks to your support, Dr Theresa Hickey from the Dame Roma Mitchell Cancer Research Laboratories at the University of Adelaide is pioneering vital research to better understand why patients develop therapy resistance in the hope of coming up with new treatment options to combat this fatal form of the disease. We know that the major cause of death from breast cancer is resistance to current estrogen receptor target therapies, so through our research we are developing alternative approaches to treat or prevent therapy resistant disease. To develop these alternative therapies, Dr Hickey and her team first had to understand the hormonal imbalance that occurs within breast cancer to decipher how to target this with a potential treatment. The sex hormones estrogen and androgen are natural antagonists in men and women, and their relative action dictates biological gender and sex differences in the functioning of many body organs. The breast is an excellent example of sex hormone antagonism as breasts develop in women due to a predominance of estrogen action and do not develop in men due to a predominance of androgen action. We aim, through a new therapy, to reawaken androgen receptor activity in estrogen receptor positive breast cancers to stimulate its ability to control the actions of estrogen and in turn prevent breast cancer from forming or treat it once it has developed. We believe that breast cancer represents a state of hormone imbalance and are exploring whether restoring this balance will be an effective, less toxic way of treating or preventing estrogen receptor positive breast cancer. Estrogen receptor positive breast cancer occurs when the cancer cells grow in response to the sex hormone estrogen. These cancers also commonly have other sex hormone receptors, including androgen and progesterone receptors. Breast cancers that have all three sex hormone receptors are much more likely to respond to anti-estrogen therapy than those that have estrogen receptor alone. Those that have estrogen receptor and just one other sex hormone receptor lie in between these extremes in terms of therapy response, Theresa said. Since estrogen receptor positive breast cancer is driven by abnormal estrogen activity, we suspect the androgen receptor is not able to play its normal role to keep the balance in check." Continuing to explore the role of these receptors in estrogen driven breast cancer, Dr Hickey s research will open up avenues for repurposing drugs currently in use for other diseases in the hopes of beating the most aggressive breast cancers affecting our loved ones. Image left: Dr Hickey's vital research could lead to a new treatment for breast cancer that is resistant to current therapies. Have you or a loved one been touched by breast cancer? Whether you've personally experienced breast cancer, or someone close to you has, we would love to share your story with our community. Get in touch with us at or contactus@abcr.com.au. 3

4 Promising Research to Stop the Spread of Breast Cancer Based at the Basil Hetzel Institute for Translational Health Research, PhD student Chris DiFelice is leading lifesaving research to develop a new therapy for breast cancer that has spread to the lungs. We know that the survival rate of women that have metastatic breast cancer at first diagnosis is alarmingly low, with only one in four women still alive five years after diagnosis. Determined to improve this statistic, Chris research is focused on the idea that scar tissue can help create an environment that promotes the spread of breast cancer cells around the body. Given the significant overlap in pathways associated with cancer and scar tissue development, I am researching the role of a group of enzymes that have been shown to play a role in these two diseases called peroxidases" Chris said. "With the guidance of Professor Andreas Evdokiou, our team has been able to show that these enzymes can act on cells found in the scar tissue environment, called fibroblasts. From this we ve been able to demonstrate that when we treat these lung fibroblasts with the peroxidases in the lab we can stimulate them to produce collagen, which is the major protein made during scar tissue development. This breakthrough has led to a collaboration with a global pharmaceutical company to develop a way to block the activity of peroxidases and in turn the spread of breast cancer to the lungs. "We are hoping that by targeting peroxidase activity, we can block the development of scar tissue and potentially reduce the growth and spread of breast cancer in the lungs. If we are successful with this drug it could lead to an effective treatment for cancer." Not only will this treatment help breast cancer patients, it could also help other people suffering from any fibrotic diseases in major organs such as the lungs, heart and liver. Breast cancer is a serious disease and I am hoping my research could lead to a treatment that will save lives and stop the heartbreak of breast cancer. It is thanks to generous donor support that students like Chris can discover new treatments that if successful, can save the lives of many living with this heartbreaking disease. Image left: A new therapy for breast cancer that has spread to the lungs is on the horizon thanks to PhD student Chris. We Need You Thank You for Supporting Vital Research You may have recently received a letter and brochure from us that shared a snapshot of our research highlights from Thank you to those who donated to support lifesaving breast cancer research. It doesn't stop there! We need your ongoing support to help the one in eight women diagnosed with breast cancer each year in Australia. Women like mother-of-three, Nicky Welch who was diagnosed with breast cancer last year at the young age of 44-years-old. Research saved her life, and now with your support it can continue to save the lives of other women devastated by this disease. 4

5 Research Saved a Young Mum s Life - Thanks To You! This all finished in September and I remember going to the AFL Grand Final in Melbourne and I had this clear bill of health it felt amazing. It was a pain in her right breast, like that of a torn muscle, which led Kate Shields to a breast cancer diagnosis she never saw coming. In January last year the 38-year-old mother was diagnosed with aggressive hormonal breast cancer. I randomly felt some pain and my right breast was really sore. I thought I had pulled a muscle, but because it felt quite big I went to my doctor to get it checked. She sent me off for a scan, and I knew when I was having it that something was terribly wrong, Kate recounts. I was then recommended to have a mammogram and I just remember crying and crying through that, it was nothing I had ever experienced. The next day I was back having a biopsy before my doctor told me I had aggressive hormonal breast cancer. It was the size of a golf ball, but at that stage I didn t have the option to have surgery. Going from being a young, active mum to her beautiful 4-year-old daughter Chloe, to then hearing she had aggressive breast cancer was a shock for Kate and her young family. The diagnosis was quite shocking for me. I just went from everything will be fine to well, it s not. I could potentially die. Before we had all my tests I had no idea if the cancer had spread, that was a whole week without knowing. Luckily for Kate, she caught her cancer early before it had the chance to spread. She began six months of gruelling chemotherapy before an operation to remove the tumour. After chemotherapy I had a follow up which showed the tumour had shrunk significantly. They took 18 lymph nodes during surgery just for a precaution, and then after that I had radiotherapy. "Although it has been a very long journey, I m only starting to feel good now. Flashforward to this year and Kate is grateful to be celebrating Mother s Day with her loving husband and daughter, having fought and beaten her breast cancer. It s your support of research that continues to advance treatments and save the lives of Kate and so many others. Unfortunately, there s so many other people that don t get told they are cured, like I did, Kate said. Breast cancer research is so important to me. I hope that by the time my daughter is a grown up, she won t have to go through what I did. And I won t have to go through what my mum went through supporting me, or what my husband went through with his mum who was also diagnosed with breast cancer. Your ongoing support is changing the lives of people like Kate every day. Thank you. Image left: A young mum, Kate's life was changed forever when she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer. Image above: Now a breast cancer survivor, Kate is grateful for the research that saved her life. 5

6 Following Research Around the Globe to Save Lives High BMI is known to be an independent risk factor for breast cancer and if we can understand that fact then hopefully we can develop a preventative strategy to identify the risk women face developing breast cancer. Crossing countries and chasing her passion for saving lives, PhD student Amita Gautam Ghadge has been in Adelaide for just six months, leaving her home town of Mumbai in India in the hope her research will prevent women from being diagnosed with breast cancer in Australia and around the world. Thanks to your support, we are proud to be funding Amita s PhD project, developing preventative and screening strategies for breast cancer in young women. Amita is conducting her PhD through the University of Adelaide under the supervision of Associate Professor Wendy Ingman at the Basil Hetzel Institute for Translational Health Research. From her research findings, Amita hopes to identify women at an early stage of life that might be at a high risk of developing breast cancer through new preventative and screening strategies she would have developed during her PhD. A long-term outcome would be if we can develop these strategies and be able to identify high risk cases we could hopefully prevent breast cancer in women. It is thanks to our dedicated supporters that ABCR can provide funding for Amita s revolutionary research that will help prevent women from experiencing the heartbreak of breast cancer. Currently there are no screening options for women who are classified as too young to get a mammogram. I am hoping with my research we can identify the risk of breast cancer in young women. Amita plans on achieving this by studying fat in breast development and, most importantly, how that can influence a woman s risk of breast cancer. We are trying to understand how increased fat during puberty impacts breast cancer risk in adulthood. According to literature, girls that have a high Body Mass Index (BMI) during puberty have a lower breast cancer risk than girls with a low BMI, Amita explained. This is reversed and changes for women after menopause. Women who have a high BMI are more susceptible to developing breast cancer than women with a low BMI." The funding from ABCR and donors means a lot to me and it s given me a chance to travel to Adelaide and pursue my passion in breast cancer research, Amita said. If my research plays a part in developing strategies that could prevent women battling breast cancer then I would be achieving something immeasurable. Image left: Amita's PhD research will help identify new risk factors for breast cancer. Image above: By identifying potential risks, Amita's research could help prevent more women from being diagnosed with breast cancer in the future. abcr.com.au We want to hear from you! What would you like to read about? Get in touch with us at contactus@abcr.com.au Head Office: 60 Woodville Rd, Woodville SA 5011 Ph: contactus@abcr.com.au