A protein in the immune system can be manipulated to help overcome bowel cancer, according to new research from The Australian National University (ANU). The research is published in Science Advances.

Bowel cancer claims more than 100 lives in Australia each week, yet around 90% of cases can be successfully treated if detected early.

According to lead author Dr. Abhimanu Pandey, from ANU, the protein, known as Ku70, can be activated or “turned on” like a light switch by using a combination of new and existing drugs.

A team of biochemists at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge has developed a new method to incorporate structurally unusual amino acids into proteins by using bacteria. The method is described in the journal Nature.

Prior research has shown that DNA codes for just 20 amino acids, the building blocks for making all the proteins used by living creatures. These are known as alpha amino acids. Prior research has also suggested that beneficial compounds could be created with a method to create proteins using beta amino acids. Researchers have suggested that applications could include the development of new kinds of medicines and possibly novel catalysts for manufacturing processes.

Such proteins have been engineered via syntheses in the lab. but scientists would prefer a more natural approach, which would be both cheaper and more efficient. This means that a technique is required to get a living cell to generate a desired protein using a beta amino acid.

Tisch Cancer Institute researchers have discovered that a certain type of chemotherapy improves the immune system’s ability to fight off bladder cancer, particularly when combined with immunotherapy.

These findings, published in Cell Reports Medicine, may explain why the approach, cisplatin chemotherapy, can lead to a cure in a small subset of patients with metastatic, or advanced, bladder cancer. Researchers also believe that their findings could explain why clinical trials combining another type of chemotherapy, carboplatin-based chemo, with immunotherapy have not been successful but others that use cisplatin with immunotherapy are successful.

“We have known for decades that cisplatin works better than carboplatin in bladder cancer, however, the mechanisms underlying those clinical observations have remained elusive until now,” said the study’s lead author Matthew Galsky, M.D., Co-Director of the Center of Excellence for Bladder Cancer at The Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai.