issue 49
MAR/APR 2012
Dr Jeff Holst, Movember Young Investigator 2008-2012 When talking about his project Jeff describes prostate cancers as “hungry, growing cells”. Last November, Jeff and his team made a major discovery: how to cut off their food supply in order to slow down the growing rate of prostate cancer tumours. His research was published in a prestigious scientific journal, Cancer Research and was supported entirely by Movember through PCFA’s Research Program. Jeff completed his PhD in 2003 at St Vincent’s Hospital Centre for Immunology in Sydney, before undertaking postdoctoral studies at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in the USA. He returned to Australia in 2006, switching his focus from immunology to cancer research and received a fellowship from the Cancer Institute NSW. He has received funding from the NHMRC, Cancer Council NSW and PCFA. Jeff has been a Movember Young Investigator since 2008. He is currently
Head of the Origins of Cancer group at the Centenary Institute and is studying the role of pumps that control the amount of nutrients taken into and out of cancer cells. Jeff and his team have discovered that two of these nutrient pumps are increased in prostate cancer. Since these pumps are present on the outside of cells, they are excellent candidates for drug targeting. These drugs could be designed to inhibit the function of these pumps, ‘starving the cancer’ by restricting nutrient uptake.
This information allows Jeff and his team to target the pumps – and they have tried two routes. They found that they could disrupt the uptake of leucine, an essential amino acid that helps regulate blood sugar and energy levels, firstly by reducing the expression amount of the protein pumps, and secondly by introducing a drug that competes with leucine. Both approaches slowed cancer growth, in essence ‘starving’ the cancer cells. Dr Qian Wang, a senior post-doctoral Fellow in Jeff’s laboratory states that
continues on page 3