One in three men and one in four women in Australia will be diagnosed with cancer before the age of 75. Our clear mission is to find better ways to diagnose and treat the disease.
Current Laboratory Members
Associate Professor Nigel McMillan: Dr Wenyi Gu, Dr Tathagata Dutta, Ms Liz Payne, Ms Melinda Burgess, Ms Sherry Wu, Ms Noraliana Khairuddin, Ms Richa Singhania, Mr Josh Ferguson, Ms Anna Vestergaard and Mr Akul Singhania.
The Molecular Virology Group’s research focuses on cancers caused by viruses, primarily the human papillomavirus. We are developing new genetic methods to treat not only cancers caused by human papillomavirus, but potentially all cancers.
Current Research Projects
While we are well aware that human papillomavirus (HPV) causes cervical cancer, a team in the lab has been investigating the role this virus may play in other cancers, particularly prostate and breast cancer. They have shown that HPV DNA can be found in both these cancers and we now have to work out if this is causing or driving the development of these cancers.
Finally, we have been investigating, together with our clinical colleagues Drs Devinder Gil and Peter Molle, the most common form of adult leukaemia, Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia (CLL). The big problem is that we don’t have any good laboratory tools with which to investigate CLL, as once removed from the patient the cells rapidly die. However, after intense study we have now worked out how to keep them alive for 100 days and using this system have made a number of breakthroughs that will allow us to develop new therapies and treatments for this cancer.
RNA Interference to treat cancer
Our laboratory is studying a novel means to treat cancer cells called RNA interference or RNAi. One can think of it as the volume control on the radio – a way to turn down the expression (or volume) of single genes. Cancer is often caused by certain genes being over-expressed (or turned up far too loud) and now the complete sequencing of the human genome is complete we have begun to understand which genes need turning down. In cervical cancer it happens to be genes from the human papillomavirus that are driving the cancer and we have shown that turning off these genes by RNAi causes these cancer cells stop growing and die. So cervical cancer is a great model system to test out RNAi therapy.
Delivery of RNAi
One of the major issues in RNA is the inability to delivery these large and bulky molecules to cells in the body. They tend to be broken up and removed quickly. We are working on several solutions to this problem using mouse models and have developed a novel delivery system to do this via the blood using something call liposomes, or via the skin (see figure) using nano-needles, a new technique developed by Professor Mark Kendall.
RNA Interference and the immune system
A holy grail of cancer research is to find ways that allow the immune system to “see” cancer cells as they are very good a hiding away. Even current therapies such as chemotherapy and radiation treatment ultimately need the immune system to “clean up” cancer cells. A surprising finding from our RNAi work is that it can also alert the immune system to the presence of a cancer cell. This is a finding we have patented and it has major implications for RNAi therapy as it means we now can treat a few cancer cells and the immune system, now aware of the cancer, will now attack and remove the rest of the untreated tumours.
HPV in other cancers
While we are well aware that HPV causes cervical cancer, a team in the lab has been investigating the role this virus may play in other cancers, particularly prostate and breast cancer. They have shown that HPV DNA can be found in both these cancers and we now have to work out if this is causing or driving the development of these cancers.
Associate Professor McMillan is currently offering postgraduate projects in his laboratory. Click here for more information.