18 September 2006

Research by a University of Queensland academic could lead to a treatment for breast cancer.

Dr Greg Monteith, from UQ's School of Pharmacy, has been awarded a $67,000 UQ Foundation Research Excellence award to research calcium transportation and breast cancer.

Calcium exists in our bodies as a mineral for healthy teeth and bones but also as a freely movable form inside cells. Dr Monteith's research focuses on intracellular calcium and the transportation of this calcium in the breast.

He has been studying calcium and breast cancer since 2000. His research found breast cancer cells have abnormal expression of pumps that could transport calcium out of cancer cells.

Intracellular calcium is transported through the body via different transporters, and there are a number of different transporters in the breast. By understanding how these transporters work and finding a way of controlling them, it is also expected that there can be a way of stopping breast cancer growth.

Dr Monteith�s research aims to control the transporters pharmacologically and he is examining different transporters as potential drug targets.

�What my lab is looking at is not only how calcium gets into milk and what transporters are involved but also how important the transporter is in breast cancer development, and whether it is a drug target,� he said.

�There�s something that goes on in breast cancer that makes cells adopt a very abnormal expression of calcium transporters.

�What we found is that these calcium transporters are altered and so we are trying to study them more and understand them better to eventually lead to breast cancer treatments.�

Dr Monteith, from Sherwood, said his earlier research focused on PMCAs, calcium transporters in the plasma membrane. The role of this transporter in breast cancer proliferation is understood but it is not an adequate drug target.

His research will continue to look at a wide spectrum of calcium transporters and involve the development of new techniques with the hope of finding better drug targets.

�We are now studying newly characterised and identified calcium transporters in the mammary gland and breast cancer and we are assessing which are the optimal targets,� Dr Monteith said.

�The calcium transporters we are now studying are more likely to respond to drugs. They are not targets that you might need gene therapy for. These are really pharmacologically-relevant targets.�

�This means it is not unreasonable to consider there is potential for the design of new therapies in the future,� Dr Monteith said.

The quality of this research has meant some valuable international collaborations with universities in the United States including John Hopkins University and the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory. Both are leading institutions in the field.

�This network is helping to move the research forward faster and it is really becoming an international team,� Dr Monteith said.

The University of Queensland�s outstanding research achievements are being celebrated during Research Week 2006 from September 18 to 22.

The event is designed to raise awareness of current UQ research among the university community, the general public, industry, government and the media.

For details of this year�s program visit http://www.uq.edu.au/research-week/

Media inquiries: Dr Greg Monteith (0402 240 801, 3365 7442) or Liz Kerr at UQ Communications (3365 2339).