The Group of Breast Cancer Researchers at the University of Malta has come up with new findings that suggest they will facilitate therapy for breast cancer patients.
The researchers have been invited to present their results at the International Seminar Series of workshops across European research centres.
Organised by Affymetrix, a pioneer company in microarray technology and leader in genomics analysis, the workshops will be held next month at the Erasmus Medical Centre (Rotterdam), Karolinksa Institute (Sweden), Uppsala Hospital (Sweden), German Cancer Research Centre (Berlin) and KrebsCentrum University (Dresden).
The University’s Department of Physiology and Biochemistry head Christian Scerri said: “One of the major breakthroughs achieved by the Maltese researchers is a novel test that will differentiate between known and new types of breast cancer in order to offer the right therapy.”
The test uses knowledge originating from the Malta research programme, utilising patient material from the University’s Departments of Pathology and Surgery and Mater Dei Hospital, together with other resources from international collaborators, Prof. Scerri said.
The research group, led by Godfrey Grech and Prof. Scerri, includes a post-doctoral research scientist, Christian Saliba, four PhD students and two MSc students.
The researchers are partners in a 2007-2013 Italy-Malta European Regional Development Fund programme called ImaGenX (www.imagenx.eu).
“Our project focuses on the study of breast cancer risk factors, molecular pathology and the classification of patients according to protein markers. These markers provide information on the causes and type of diseases, the selection and use of specific therapy and their outcome. This should lead us to find new ways to treat specific groups,” said Dr Grech, who has published a cancer paper for the European Association for Predictive, Preventive and Personalised Medicine.
This research has also been instrumental in a number of undergraduate and postgraduate training programmes, with two PhD scholarships being donated through efforts and raised funds by the Alive Charity Foundation (http://alivecharity.com) and the Action for Breast Cancer Foundation (http://www.actionforbreastcancer.com/).
The research was also possible thanks to the patients and their families who agreed to take part.