The regional charity, which supports world-class research throughout Yorkshire, has awarded £187,103 to researchers so they can develop new tools for exploring the origins and causes of paediatric cancers, including neuroblastomas, one of the most common childhood cancer.
Childhood cancers are thought to arise from defects in embryonic development before birth, and the scientists plan to analyse the development process using induce Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells, which resemble embryonic stem cells and can produce all the cell types that occur in an embryo.
For the first time, the team has created iPS cells from neuroblastoma cells, which will be used to seek new approaches to therapy.
iPS cells have already provided a powerful approach to modelling diseases with a strong genetic basis, such as Huntington´s and Parkinson´s disease.
Professor Peter Andrews of the University´s Department of Biomedical Science, who is leading the project, said: "We plan to re-programme cells taken from paediatric cancers, which carry the mutations required for cancer development, back to a cellular state preceding that associated with cancer.
"These cells will then develop back into cancer cells, recreating the developmental conditions under which the cancer arose and providing a controlled system in which development, progression and response of the disease to drugs or other interventions can be assessed. We hope to discover specific genes and molecular processes that either drive initiation of these cancers or their progression once they are formed."
Information gained during the project could aid early diagnosis and monitoring of these diseases, and technology developed will enable drug screening to identify new therapeutic drugs.
Notes for Editors: With nearly 25,000 students from 125 countries, the University of Sheffield is one of the UK´s leading and largest universities. A member of the Russell Group, it has a reputation for world-class teaching and research excellence across a wide range of disciplines. The University of Sheffield has been named University of the Year in the Times Higher Education Awards for its exceptional performance in research, teaching, access and business performance. In addition, the University has won four Queen´s Anniversary Prizes (1998, 2000, 2002, 2007).
These prestigious awards recognise outstanding contributions by universities and colleges to the United Kingdom´s intellectual, economic, cultural and social life. Sheffield also boasts five Nobel Prize winners among former staff and students and many of its alumni have gone on to hold positions of great responsibility and influence around the world.The University´s research partners and clients include Boeing, Rolls Royce, Unilever, Boots, AstraZeneca, GSK, ICI, Slazenger, and many more household names, as well as UK and overseas government agencies and charitable foundations.
The University has well-established partnerships with a number of universities and major corporations, both in the UK and abroad. Its partnership with Leeds and York Universities in the White Rose Consortium has a combined research power greater than that of either Oxford or Cambridge.
For more information on the University´s Department of Biomedical Science visit: Department of Biomedical Science
Harrogate-based Yorkshire Cancer Research is the UK´s largest regional medical research charity (registered charity no. 516898)
Over the next 10 years, Yorkshire Cancer Research is committed to slashing current statistics that show 259 people die every week from cancer in Yorkshire alone. Currently Yorkshire has one of the worst cancer survival rates in the UK, partly due to a lack of funding by the government and national charities to researchers and clinicians throughout the region.
For more information on Yorkshire Cancer Research, please visit Yorkshire Cancer Research
Three year investigation into childhood cancers launched
