Latest news with #UniversitiesofSydney
Sydney Morning Herald
6 days ago
- Health
- Sydney Morning Herald
Australian cancer breakthrough could mean an end to relapse for thousands, including Colette
Collette Chase says the hardest part of finishing breast cancer treatment is the fear that the disease will return. 'Even Princess Kate said it recently ... you just live in a ball of anxiety,' said Chase, who is in her 50s. 'People will say to you, 'Ah look, you could get hit by a bus tomorrow'. I'd choose that because if this comes back metastatic as stage 4, what's [the treatment] going to do to me?' Australian scientists are hoping to alleviate this fear and halve breast cancer recurrence by utilising new technology that allows them to find, isolate and study the rare cancer cells lying dormant in people's bones. Loading Garvan Institute researchers have discovered how to find the previously undetectable cells, and their technology will be used in a $25 million research project to learn how they hide, how they are different, why they 'wake up' and how they can be destroyed beforehand. It has potential to be applied to our understanding of why other cancers return. Despite dramatically improved survival rates, about 15 per cent of breast cancer patients will experience a recurrence of it within 10 years, which can be fatal. This is because rare 'seeds' of cancer can conceal themselves, most often in bones, and remain dormant for years, sometimes decades. A team of 60 researchers from seven Australian institutes and organisations, the Universities of Sydney and Newcastle, multiple Australian hospitals and universities, plus Yale and Washington universities, have been awarded the National Breast Cancer Foundation's biggest grant for the project, dubbed AllClear.
The Age
6 days ago
- Health
- The Age
Australian cancer breakthrough could mean an end to relapse for thousands, including Colette
Collette Chase says the hardest part of finishing breast cancer treatment is the fear that the disease will return. 'Even Princess Kate said it recently ... you just live in a ball of anxiety,' said Chase, who is in her 50s. 'People will say to you, 'Ah look, you could get hit by a bus tomorrow'. I'd choose that because if this comes back metastatic as stage 4, what's [the treatment] going to do to me?' Australian scientists are hoping to alleviate this fear and halve breast cancer recurrence by utilising new technology that allows them to find, isolate and study the rare cancer cells lying dormant in people's bones. Loading Garvan Institute researchers have discovered how to find the previously undetectable cells, and their technology will be used in a $25 million research project to learn how they hide, how they are different, why they 'wake up' and how they can be destroyed beforehand. It has potential to be applied to our understanding of why other cancers return. Despite dramatically improved survival rates, about 15 per cent of breast cancer patients will experience a recurrence of it within 10 years, which can be fatal. This is because rare 'seeds' of cancer can conceal themselves, most often in bones, and remain dormant for years, sometimes decades. A team of 60 researchers from seven Australian institutes and organisations, the Universities of Sydney and Newcastle, multiple Australian hospitals and universities, plus Yale and Washington universities, have been awarded the National Breast Cancer Foundation's biggest grant for the project, dubbed AllClear.
