News in Cancer Research: Breast Cancer Behaviour and Proton Beam Therapy

A study heralded to reshape the treatment of breast cancer as we find more evidence indicating the immune system does not behave the way we first thought will be presented before the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) Annual Scientific Conference this week in Perth.
Associate Professor Brendon Coventry from the University of Adelaide will represent the study, which is a 20-year collaboration between surgeons, immunologists, pathologists and scientists.
It showed that the immune response appeared to be activated in some breast cancer patients where a noticeably higher count of specific white blood cells was present when compared with normal breast tissues.
“These findings indicate that the immune response appears to be already occurring in many women with breast cancer, and that the strength of that response correlates with longer-term survival,” A/Prof Coventry says.
“It may even then be possible to switch ‘on’ the immune response in women with breast cancer to transform a weak immune response into a more effective one for clinical benefit, like we have shown with melanoma and other cancers,” A/Prof Coventry says.
In other cancer research news, a new cancer treatment causing fewer side effects than traditional radiation therapies and less damage to healthy tissue has received a large boost from the Victorian Government with the establishment of the National Centre for Proton Beam Therapy at the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre (VCCC) in Melbourne.
The VCCC is a purpose-built facility comprising Melbourne Health public hospital the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and University of Melbourne research faculties of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences and Science.
The National Centre for Proton Beam Therapy will be the first of its kind in Australia and South East Asia, and among one of only 50 centres internationally