Scientists in Melbourne expect the development of cancer drugs to speed up after being awarded a grant for a crucial piece of technology.
The Australian Cancer Research Centre will provide $2 million to the Australian Synchrotron in Melbourne for a new detector that will make the analysis of malfunctioning proteins — which cause diseases, including cancer — 10 times faster.
Australian Synchrotron director Andrew Peele said the new detector would ultimately lead to the development of new cancer drugs.
“The one we currently have is very outdated, it is very slow and what this funding is going to allow us to do is upgrade the detector,” he said.
“Effectively it will be like going from a dial-up connection to broadband.”
There are only a few synchrotron facilities in the world with this technology.
The detector is used to analyse proteins and the research is used to help understand how cancer begins and spreads.
Mr Peele said Australia had some of the best researchers in the world who should now be able to make even more cancer-related discoveries.
“So we’ve already had some wonderful examples where researchers have made those basic discoveries, worked with some very large drug companies, developed drugs and are now getting them onto market,” he said.
“But every time they do that it’s a huge piece of work. So what this detector is going to let us do, is really get that pipeline flowing.”
The synchrotron uses a process called “micro crystallography” to analyse proteins, where powerful X-ray beams are shone onto crystals. The signals from this are then picked up by the detector.
“What crystallography does is, if you can take those proteins and make them form crystals, then using the Synchrotron you can understand their exact structure,” Mr Peele said.
“Once you have structure, then you can get an idea as to their function and that’s what this detector is going to let us do.”
Deputy director of St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Professor Michael Parker, said the information would directly boost cancer drug development in Australia.
“Arming researchers with clear representations of protein structures supports efforts to design drugs that target particular proteins, to boost their anti-cancer properties or suppress their cancer-enabling effects,” he said.
The new detector will come online in 2017.