With modern surgery, most cancerous growths can be easily removed. The operation isn't life threatening and often that's the end of the problem. The danger is when the cancer spreads through the blood stream to other organs, creating more tumours.

This is the tangled mess of a cancerous tumour, feeding on the blood supply and growing out of control.

It's taken 15 years of research but Professor Chris Parrish and his team from the John Curtin School for Medical Research have developed a drug that can stop the tumour from growing any larger by starving it of a blood supply

"If we can inhibit that process, we can arrest the cancer from growing."

But the main danger to the patient is if cancer cells have already escaped the main tumour, entered the circulation and travelled to other parts of the body.

"It involves a lot of molecular gymnastics, but unfortunately there are enough cancer cells that do do that, to cause a problem."

The cancerous cells burrow through walls of blood vessels to travel to other parts of the body where they burrow their way back out of the blood vessel to establish a secondary cancer in a new tissue.

"The second way the drug works is to stop cancer cells spreading to other organs. It does that by inhibiting the cancer cells from burrowing through the walls of blood vessels."

The drug, PI 88, developed in conjunction with Progen Industries, has already dramatically reduced the spread of cancer, and stopped the growth of the tumours, in animals and is now being trialed on humans. If successful, it will give cancer sufferers a much greater chance of survival.

Prof. Peter Jeffery
JCSMR
GPO Box 334
Canberra City ACT 2601