Melbourne doctors join forces for prostate cancer research project

MELBOURNE doctors have joined one of the world’s largest-ever cancer research projects, using a supercomputer to trawl through the DNA of 2000 patients.

A consortium of Melbourne researchers will follow hundreds of high-risk prostate cancer patients to research the disease.

MELBOURNE doctors have joined one of the world’s largest-ever cancer research projects, using a supercomputer to trawl through the DNA of 2000 patients.

The consortium of Melbourne researchers will also follow hundreds of high-risk prostate cancer patients to work out which of the genetic variations uncovered in prostate cancers actually cause the greatest impact on survival.

Professor Chris Hovens of Australian Prostate Cancer Research.

Scientists from various Melbourne institutes will have access to the full genomic sequencing of 2000 tumours.

“We will be able to match the genetic signatures with actual outcomes in the patients eventually ... that will really change the way we look at things,” Prof Chris Hovens of Australian Prostate Cancer Research said.

“The majority of them will go on to have bad cancers and bad outcomes, but not all of them will. There will similarly be patients from the low-risk groups ... that go on to have very bad cancers and die rapidly. That is the real information we need, and is what has been lacking previously.”