International Cancer Moonshot Initiative: The role of ProCan

The NSW Government has signed a historic memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the United States Government to work together on the Cancer Moonshot program. Led by US Vice President Joe Biden, the Cancer Moonshot will increase the speed of cancer research globally – with the aim of making new treatments available for cancer patients faster, while improving our ability to prevent cancer and detect many cancers at an early stage.

A second agreement signed by research organisations in NSW, including Children’s Medical Research Institute (CMRI), has opened the door to increased collaboration and free flow of enormous quantities of cancer research data that will be critical to international efforts toward defeating cancer. A large amount — petabytes — of these data will be generated by CMRI’s new ProCan™ facility at Westmead.

ProCan’s new facility at Westmead[/caption]Cancer results from cells growing in an uncontrolled manner. This results from errors (mutations) in the genetic code (DNA), which causes alterations in the proteins that the DNA encodes.

ProCan™ (the ACRF International Centre for the Proteome of Human Cancer) is a world-first cancer research facility and project that aims to track the proteins in tumours to transform the way in which cancer is diagnosed and treated.

Using breakthrough technologies funded by the 30th Anniversary Award from the Australian Cancer Research Foundation (ACRF), ProCan™ researchers will, over the next 5-7 years, analyse thousands of proteins in around 70,000 tumours from children and adults. This will increase our understanding of cancer and enable personalised cancer diagnosis and treatment by giving clinicians new decision tools to determine the best treatment options specific to each patient’s cancer.

The mass study of DNA is called genomics, while the study of the entire set of proteins in cells is called proteomics. ProCan™ will combine the results of cancer proteomics and genomics (proteogenomics) in all types of cancers, to generate a vast body of data that will transform our understanding of cancer. Therefore ProCan™ has been recognised as integral to the Cancer Moonshot program.

To demonstrate its commitment to these landmark agreements, the NSW Government has committed $6 million towards cancer proteogenomics programs on childhood and young adult cancers at CMRI and the Garvan Institute.

This project will advance the pace of cancer research and reduce the time it takes to defeat this disease.

The article was provided by the Children’s Medical Research Institute. For more information visit the Children’s Medical Research Institute website.