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Gene therapy – putting out the flames of ovarian cancer thanks to funding from Ovarian cancer action
Dr Michael Salako works as a biochemist in a collaborative project in both Professor Fran Balkwill’s team at the Centre for Translational Oncology, and Dr Iain McNeish’s team in the Centre for Molecular Oncology, Institute of Cancer at Queen Mary’s School of Medicine and Dentistry.
The team is using innovative new scientific techniques such as gene therapy, to investigate how ovarian tumours can be killed to stop their deadly mission.
A protein called TNF-a, which plays a central role in causing inflammation in the body, also plays a central role in causing tumours to grow and spread. The team have shown when an agent was used to block the production of TNF-a, this was shown to stop the growth and spread by selectively targeting and killing ovarian cancer cells. Michael’s work involves using a gene therapy approach engineering cancer killing viruses (an ‘adenovirus’) to deliver a gene that inhibits the production of TNF-a.
The Centre for ‘Translational’ Oncology is so named because it is hoped that research undertaken in the lab will ‘translate’ into clinical trials on women with advanced ovarian cancer at Bart’s Hospital.
Michael is very excited about what he is doing because “a breakthrough is desperately needed. Survival rates in ovarian cancer have not improved in the last twenty years, and having lost an aunt to breast cancer I was aware that a lot of research is being undertaken around the world into breast but not ovarian cancer. I feel I can really contribute and make a difference in this area of research”. Michael accepts that whilst his research on TNF-a may not result directly in a cure for ovarian cancer, it may improve the outlook for women by prolonging quality and length of life. “my work is a piece of a jigsaw and thus could end up being part of a series of therapies which could potentially be used as a cure for ovarian as well as other cancers, “the patients are a real inspiration, and it really helps me focus every day on the importance of what we are doing here”.
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