U.S. honours Mater team
A Queensland bone marrow transplant team working on an innovative treatment for cancers of the blood has been invited to join an elite research group in the United States.
The Mini Transplant Team, a collaboration between the Mater Medical Research Institute (MMRI) and Mater Health Services (MHS), will become a member of the Mini Transplant Clinical Trials Consortium, headed by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle and Stanford University, Palo Alto.
Professor Derek Hart, Director of the Mater Medical Research Centre, says the invitation is an honour for MMRI and MHS staff.
Team leader and bone marrow transplant expert, Professor Kerry Atkinson (pictured), agrees: "These are the leaders in this field in the United States. The former director of the Fred Hutchinson Center, E. Donnall Thomas MD, won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1990 for his pioneering work on bone marrow transplantation."
The collaboration with the U.S. group means the Mater team will have access to its clinical protocols and also will be able to contribute the Brisbane clinical outcomes to its database.
After extensive research and clinical trials, using the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center's therapy as a model, the team at the Mater will be able to offer an alternative treatment for patients with cancers of the blood, including leukaemia, lymphoma, myeloma and Hodgkin's disease.
The treatment would see stem cells retrieved from the blood stream, making it less painful for the donor, usually a sibling of the patient. The immune system cells are then given to the patient in the transplant, like a blood transfusion, in the hope the normal cells will destroy the cancerous ones.
Other advantages are the small-dose chemotherapy given prior to the transplant, eliminating the side effects of large-dose chemotherapy, lowered costs and increased eligibility because of an extension in the age range of patients.
Professor Atkinson says the next step towards finding a cure for haematological cancers will be a dendritic cell therapy trial combining the skills of the MMRI and the Mini Transplant Team.
A dendritic cell is one of the cells of the immune system. It's the cell that picks up a foreign object like a tumour cell or a virus and presents it to the T cell, another cell of the immune system. The T cell recognises it as foreign and attacks the tumour or cells that harbour the virus.
Email: kerry_atkinson@mater.org.au
Last reviewed 19 January 2006