[attach id=623609 size="medium" align="right"]The tumour area of one of the tissues being examined in the study can be seen marked in yellow.[/attach]
Colorectal cancer, also known as bowel cancer, affects about 250 Maltese men and women each year. These cancerous growths of the bowel wall develop for several reasons, but who we are (i.e., our genetic make-up) and what we are exposed to throughout our lives (such as what we eat and drink) are both known to play a role. Our interest is in understanding the first of these players – mutations in the genetic material of the cells of the bowel wall – to find new ways to give patients the right drugs at the right time, a concept known as ‘precision medicine’.
Mutations in a cell’s genetic make-up, or its DNA, occur in all cells when they divide to replenish the bowel. Usually these are fixed by a natural quality control process that either repairs the defective genetic code or kills the abnormal cell so it cannot do any harm. When this quality control process fails, the messages sent by the faulty code can cause cells to grow abnormally and produce a cancer. The chance of faulty code slipping through can increase either if we inherit abnormal quality control processes from our parents or if more mutations occur from the choices we all make when living our lives – from eating too much red meat to drinking too much alcohol or putting on too much weight. We also now know that although all bowel cancers have some similar features, each individual patient’s cancer is different and personal to them. These differences are not only at the genetic level but also in how the cancer responds to cancer drugs and affects the patient and their families.
To accomplish our goal of precision medicine, we need to understand these differences between cancers. We are doing this by ‘profiling’ different tumours, which means creating a molecular map of every patient’s cancer. One way to work out what will happen in people yet to develop cancer is to analyse and look at patterns in patients who have already had cancer, so we are examining the tissue from 500 Maltese patients who had colorectal cancer over the last five years. This will help us to find patterns related to how the patients fared in the months and years after their diagnosis and, hopefully, which patterns deserve particular types of treatment.
In 2018 we will be starting a new study with the Sir Anthony Mamo Oncology Centre to assess whether one of our newly-discovered molecular markers helps us to identify those patients who respond to two of the usual treatments for colorectal cancer. The hope is that this will allow to use different treatments in patients identified as not doing well with their standard chemotherapies.
Dr Romina Briffa, a pharmacist, is a post doctoral researcher working with Prof. Godfrey Grech at the University of Malta and Prof. David J. Harrison at the University of St Andrews. She is currently based at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Dr Briffa is supported by a Reach High Scholars Programme – Post-Doctoral Grants. The grant is part-financed by the European Union, Operational Programme II – Cohesion Policy 2014-2020 Investing in Human Capital to Create More Opportunities and Promote the Well-being of Society – European Social Fund.
Did you know?
• The billionth digit of pi is 9 (just in case you were wondering).
• More germs are transferred shaking hands than kissing.
• One in every 2,000 babies is born with a tooth.
• Koalas sleep an average of 22 hours a day, two hours more than the sloth.
• In 1889, the Queen of Italy, Margherita Savoy, ordered the first pizza delivery.
• The term ‘astronaut’ comes from Greek words that mean ‘star’ and ‘sailor.’
• You lose about 50 to 100 hairs a day.
For more trivia, visit www.um.edu.mt/think.
Sound bites
• In 1973, IBM introduced the IBM 3340 Winchester disk drive, the first significant commercial use of low mass and low load heads with lubricated platters. This technology and its derivatives remained the standard through 2011. Project head Kenneth Haughton named it after the Winchester 30-30 rifle because it was planned to have two 30 MB spindles; however, the actual product shipped with two spindles for data modules of either 35 MB or 70 MB.
• For the first time, physicists have built a two-dimensional experimental system that allows them to study the physical properties of materials theorised to exist only in four-dimensional space. An international team of researchers demonstrated that the behavior of particles of light can be made to match predictions about the four-dimensional version of the ‘quantum Hall effect’ – a phenomenon at the root of three Nobel Prizes in physics – in a two-dimensional array of ‘waveguides.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180103132748.htm
• To find out some more interesting science news, listen in on Radio Mocha every Monday and Friday at 1pm on Radju Malta 2.