New anti-cancer treatments offer the promise to patients of a much “kinder” and effective response to the disease but pose cost and regulation challenges to governments, health providers and the pharmaceutical sector, according to one of the world's leading cancer researchers.
Professor Sir David Lane also told a lecture in University College Cork last night that often highly effective current therapies for cancer were sometimes delivered in a less that optimum fashion. He said that the organisation of effective Integrated Cancer Centres and rigorous audit in an adequately funded health care system would have great impact in the treatment of the disease.
Prof Lane who is internationally recognised for his original work into the molecular basis of tumours in humans delivered the latest in the Distinguished Guest Lecture Series hosted by UCC President, Professor G T Wrixon. The lecture was organised in association with the Biosciences Institute at UCC.
Prof Lane, Director of the Cancer Research UK Cell Transformation Group at the University of Dundee, held out the prospect of a great reduction over the next 50 years in the morbidity and incidence of cancer in society which would see the disease being controlled and in many cases effectively “cured”. But he said “curing cancer” would require radical progress in prevention, early detection and therapy.
Prevention was by far the most effective means of controlling disease and improving the health of society yet efforts to alter smoking habits and improve diet had been confounded by issues of poor communication of risk, political pressures and lack of funding and research.
He said the early detection of cancer by screening could have major benefits for society and that the selective targeting of screening and prevention strategies to populations at excess risk might well prove the most effective way of managing such interventions.
Prof Lane said rapid advances in cell and molecular biology and in rational drug development were producing highly effective new anti-cancer treatments.
These were more selective than current therapies and were often tailored to specific defects in the cancer cell. Their optimal application required a detailed molecular analysis of the tumour to be treated and an individualisation of care.
The new therapies had much reduced toxicity compared with conventional anti-cancer drugs and offered the promise to the patient of a much kinder and more effective treatment of their disease. “But their use and development pose challenges of cost and regulation that are creating considerable stress within the Pharmaceutical/Government/Health Provider interface,” he said.
Prof Lane leads a team whose research is focussed on the p53 tumour suppressor gene, also known as the “Guardian of the genome”. He is credited with the original discovery of the p53 protein SV40 T antigen complex and he and his fellow researchers are hoping to use their knowledge of p53 to develop new treatments for cancer.
Many tumours make mutant forms of p53 that no longer work properly. In the test tube, at least, the researchers are beginning to find ways to make these damaged p53s work again. They use modern methods of protein chemistry to try and discover novel molecules that will replace p53 or restore its function. The discovery of such agents would potentially offer a powerful and selective new way of treating cancer.
Prof Lane, who was knighted for his contribution to cancer research in the New Year honours list in January 2000, is also founder and chief scientific officer at Cyclacel, a Dundee based biotechnology company developing novel drugs for the treatment of cancer.
ENDS
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