Unearthing the bedROCK of Early-Onset Bowel Cancer?

We are excited to announce a team led by Professor Michael Samuel will be receiving a three-year $600k Bowel Cancer Australia grant for their research on early-onset bowel cancer via the 2023 round of Cancer Australia’s Priority-driven Collaborative Cancer Research Scheme (PdCCRS).

Professor Samuel of the Centre for Cancer Biology (an alliance between the University of South Australia and SA Pathology) and the Basil Hetzel Institute for Translational Health Research will investigate ROCK-induced early-onset bowel cancer progression.

ROCK, Rho-associated kinase, is an enzyme (protein) found in all of us, that controls the shape and movement of cells within the body. ROCK goes into overdrive in people with bowel cancer, accelerating the growth and spread of the disease.

The way in which cancer cells communicate with normal cells in their environment via ROCK has been discovered to drive disease progression (invasion, metastasis, and recurrence).

“We have evidence that ROCK activity in bowel cancers drives this process by influencing how cancers communicate with their environment. Our project will investigate how this happens. We will also study whether certain effects of ROCK activation in early-onset bowel cancers can help us predict whose cancers will recur and whose will not,” says Professor Samuel.

Bowel Cancer Australia remains grateful to our passionate fundraisers for their support and efforts in raising awareness and funds for early-onset bowel cancer, helping to make such research grants possible.

New Bowel Prep Resource to Help Things Run Smoother

In Australia, inadequate bowel prep is observed in around 7% of all colonoscopies. With more than 900,000 colonoscopies performed annually, this can equate to as many as 63,000 inadequate bowel preparations leading to poor or cancelled colonoscopies.

That’s why Bowel Cancer Australia has launched a new resource to help you ‘bowel prep’ prior to colonoscopy.

The new bowel prep resource provides a list of easy steps for you to follow, reminders at each step, and videos to help explain the bowel prep and white / low-residue diet. You can amend the timing of steps as advised by your colonoscopist, if needed.

New Vaccine Targeting KRAS in Bowel and Pancreatic Cancer

A new vaccine is being investigated as a potential off-the-shelf treatment in bowel and pancreatic cancer patients with a KRAS mutation.

Approximately 40% of bowel cancers have a KRAS mutation. In healthy cells, KRAS functions as an on-off switch that regulates cell growth and survival. When the gene is mutated, KRAS can become stuck in the “on” position, allowing uncontrollable cell growth, which can then lead to cancer.

In a phase 1 trial involving 25 KRAS-mutated bowel and pancreatic cancer patients at high risk of their cancer returning after surgery, the vaccine was administered post-surgery with a view to preventing or delaying recurrence.

84% of patients had the desired immune response, meaning immune T-cells targeting cancer cells with a KRAS-mutation were activated and grew in number. Also noted in 84% of patients, circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA, a marker for lingering cancer cells) was reduced. In 24% of patients, ctDNA was completely absent. Patients who had a higher T-cell response also experienced a longer time without the disease returning, known as disease-free survival (DFS).

Could a new stool test help to improve bowel cancer screening?

According to a recent study published in The Lancet Oncology, a new screening test developed in the Netherlands may improve the accuracy of bowel cancer screening.

“We want to be able to detect the tumours before they have become invasive, that is at the stage of larger premalignant polyps,” says Gerrit Meijer, principal investigator at the Netherlands Cancer Institute and co-author of the research.

Faecal immunochemical tests (FIT) work by detecting the presence of haemoglobin – a protein found in blood – in stool. They are a type of stool test that many countries, including Australia, use in bowel cancer screening programs.

The new test is caLled the multitarget FIT (mtFIT), as it detects haemoglobin and two other proteins – calprotectin and serpin family F member 2.

The study researchers say the mtFIT is more effective than the FIT at detecting precursors to bowel cancer, such as polyps.