The Cancer Biology & Therapeutics Program aims to integrate various basic research activities, platform technologies and pre-clinical model systems available within Peter Mac to discover, develop, characterise and refine novel cancer therapeutics for clinical use for solid tumours.
This integrated program allows insight into fundamental aspects of cancer biology through the identification of novel tumour-suppressor and tumour-initiating genes. We explore the functional relationships between altered cancer genetics and aberrations to the cancer epigenome, and a deeper understanding of the molecular events that drive oncogenic signalling networks. These findings serve as a basis for extensive translation-based studies to determine the potential therapeutic benefit of interfering with or augmenting the activity of key proteins involved in these signalling networks through pharmacological intervention.
Program head
Prof Sarah-Jane Dawson
Prof Mark Dawson
Research labs
Key collaborative papers
Fong CY, Gilan O, Lam EY, Rubin AF, Ftouni S, Tyler D, Stanley K, Sinha D, Yeh P, Morison J, Giotopoulos G, Lugo D, Jeffrey P, Lee SC, Carpenter C, Gregory R, Ramsay RG, Lane SW, Abdel-Wahab O, Kouzarides T, Johnstone RW, Dawson SJ, Huntly BJ, Prinjha RK, Papenfuss AT, Dawson MA (2015). BET inhibitor resistance emerges from leukaemia stem cells. Nature. 525(7570):538-42.
Wong SQ, Waldeck K, Vergara IA, Schröder J, Madore J, Wilmott JS, Colebatch AJ, De Paoli-Iseppi R, Li J, Lupat R, Semple T, Arnau GM, Fellowes A, Leonard JH, Hruby G, Mann GJ, Thompson JF, Cullinane C, Johnston M, Shackleton M, Sandhu S, Bowtell DD, Johnstone RW, Fox SB, McArthur GA, Papenfuss AT, Scolyer RA, Gill AJ, Hicks RJ, Tothill RW (2015). UV-associated mutations underlie the etiology of MCV-negative merkel cell carcinomas. Cancer Res. 75(24):5228-34.
Parmenter TJ, Kleinschmidt M, Kinross KM, Bond ST, Li J, Kaadige MR, Rao A, Sheppard KE, Hugo W, Pupo GM, Pearson RB, McGee SL, Long GV, Scolyer RA, Rizos H, Lo RS, Cullinane C, Ayer DE, Ribas A, Johnstone RW, Hicks RJ, McArthur GA (2014). Response of BRAF-mutant melanoma to BRAF inhibition is mediated by a network of transcriptional regulators of glycolysis. Cancer Discov. 4(4):423-33.
Leimgruber A, Möller A, Everitt SJ, Chabrot M, Ball DL, Solomon B, MacManus M, Hicks RJ (2014). Effect of platinum-based chemoradiotherapy on cellular proliferation in bone marrow and spleen, estimated by 18F-FLT PET/CT in patients with locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer. J Nucl Med. 55(7):1075-80.
