New labs to explore cancer links

South Australia’s capability in immunotherapy is set to receive a significant boost with three new laboratories in the South Australian Immunogenomics Cancer Institute (SAiGENCI), led by internationally recognised researcher Professor Brendan Jenkins.

After working in the US and as the Head of the Centre for Innate Immunity and Infectious Diseases at the Hudson Institute in Melbourne, Prof Jenkins will move to SAiGENCI in July. He has already begun the quest to attract the world’s best and brightest minds to establish the new labs in Adelaide.

The three new labs, each staffed with between 10 and 15 people, will focus on basic discovery and translational research in innate immunity and inflammation, adaptive immunity, and immunotherapy, in a quest to understand the role of the immune system in treating some of the most lethal cancers.

‘From a scientific perspective, the fact that SAiGENCI is a brand-new medical research institute being built from the ground up was very appealing, as well as being part of something new and driving a culture of research excellence,’ says Professor Jenkins.

The aim is to fill a gap in research and discovery around cancer inflammation, the immune system and immunotherapy in South Australia and to collaborate with other researchers and clinicians, also working towards biobanking of clinical samples (such as patient tumours, serum and plasma) to help validate foundational research.

‘Discoveries based on basic research ultimately underpin clinical trials, so my research program will be about making those discoveries related to the immune system and cancer that can be translated through our clinical connections,’ he says.

Prof Jenkins is particularly interested in the role of the immune system in stomach, lung and pancreatic cancers. His research will investigate manipulations of the immune system, including making tumours more visible to cancer-killing immune cells and changing the inflammatory response to stop cancerous tumours from developing.

‘These are among the most lethal and common cancers in the world and represent at least one third of all cancers with a link with chronic inflammation – for example, gastritis and stomach cancer, pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer, hepatitis and liver cancer.

‘There is a very strong association between inflammation and cancer, driven by uncontrolled activation of the immune system’, Prof Jenkins says.

‘We’re looking at how we can modify and activate various cell types in the immune system to target these cancers.’

He says current immunotherapies based on immune checkpoint inhibitors and more recently CAR T-cells are not effective on many prevalent cancers.

‘Immune checkpoint inhibitors have only been around for the last decade and at the moment the current immunotherapy drugs are still very limited to a few protein targets.

‘We can’t rely on the very few check point inhibitors that make up immunotherapy currently. We need to understand more about the innate and adaptive immune systems where we can identify new targets of the immune system that can be used in therapy.

‘We’ve only scratched the surface into how we can modulate the immune system to benefit a patient with cancer. Being at the early stages is exciting, because there is scope to do cutting-edge research to better understand how the immune system drives these cancers and how we can put the brake on these cancers by altering the immune system.’

While SAiGENCI has a government establishment grant to help recruit the best researchers in the field, there is also a need to attract external funding. Professor Jenkins will be bringing grants from the US Department of Defence to research stomach cancer and pancreatic cancer, but the drive for more independent funding will be ongoing, he says.

‘Current funding in Australia for basic medical research is just dire,’ he says. ‘The federal government has been great at putting in millions of dollars for the Medical Research Future Fund for clinical or translational research, but unfortunately NHMRC funding for basic research discoveries which ultimately underpin translational research is inadequate.

‘Researchers spend so much time on their computers writing grant applications – when you only have success rates around 10% with many excellent grant applications being unsuccessful because of a lack of available funding, most people are just wasting their valuable expertise writing grants they may never get.

‘There is an absolute need to increase the funding for basic research in Australia especially in cancer research, which will eventually lead to new clinical trials.

‘One of the beauties of the establishment grants that SAiGENCI has is that it does offer up to five years for research positions. It is a very good incentive to recruit people to the state because it gives them some job stability over the short term.’