From the Kalahari to the Tasman: decoding the genetic causes of cancer
Dr Vanessa Hayes knew from a very early age that she wanted to work in the medical profession. What she didn't realise was that it would be a career that would take her around the world.
She has travelled from Cape Town in South Africa where she grew
up and across to the Netherlands to complete her PhD in cancer
genetics. She has finally settled in Sydney, Australia, where she
is making a significant contribution to the depth of knowledge in
cancer comparative genomic research as part of the Children's
Cancer Institute of Australia.
Despite funding knockbacks from Australia and overseas, Dr
Vanessa Hayes has recently announced the results of a collaboration
with an international team of clinicians and researchers to unravel
the human genome and consequently, the genetic causes of
cancer.
Vanessa co-led an international team of scientists from the
Children's Cancer Institute Australia for Medical Research (CCIA),
the University of New South Wales, and Penn State University in the
USA, to sequence the genomes of indigenous southern Africans. They
were found to be among the world's most genetically diverse
people.
The genomes of four Kalahari Desert Bushmen and an ethnic Bantu
are the first to be sequenced from an indigenous population. More
than 1.3 million new genetic variants have been added to databases
of Human Genome Variation which until now have been largely
Eurocentric.
Featured as the cover story in the prestigious journal
Nature, the discovery has important implications for
medical research, providing potential markers for the origins,
treatments and cures for many of the most complex diseases,
including cancer. It also raises questions about current scientific
assumptions regarding the genetic causes of many diseases.
"It has been well established that the African continent is the
cradle of civilisation and therefore the origin of disease, we just
haven't known to what extent," says Vanessa.
Her work, specifically in understanding the genetic causes of
prostate cancer - the most common cancer in NSW - has led to new
insights into the make up of the disease.
"What has attracted me to study prostate cancer is the lack of
knowledge surrounding the causes of this common cancer," says
Vanessa. "Unlike breast cancer there is no equivalent BRCA1 or
BRCA2 gene identified, although it has a strong genetic component.
My interest is in using the strong link between ethnic diversity
and prostate cancer risk as a tool to identify new prostate cancer
susceptibility candidate genes."
Vanessa hopes that this research will eventually lead to the
possibility of genetically testing men for their risk of
contracting prostate cancer. A goal she is well on the way to
achieving."I believe that our research effort in prostate cancer
holds the potential to identify new candidate genes (or regions of
the human genome) responsible for conferring risk to prostate
cancer," she says. "For this purpose we have collected a
case-control study of men showing three-way ethnical mixture,
representing the extremes of prostate cancer incidence and
mortality rates. We will test the identified markers on nationally
available prostate cancer resources."
While she has made many breakthroughs in her work, Vanessa isn't
content to sit back on her laurels. She is currently investigating
the genome of the Tasmanian Devil, as well as the facial tumour,
which is threatening to destroy this Australian icon.
Cancer research for me is a minefield.
There is so much to discover, there are so many complexities and
there are relatively few answers.
She also has ambitions to see the field of cancer comparative
genomic research becoming a recognised research area in NSW, so the
State can play a major role in the worldwide effort to understand
tumour genetic variation at the genome level.
"Cancer research for me is a minefield. There is so much to
discover, there are so many complexities and there are relatively
few answers," she says. "The contributions to be made in this field
are endless."
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