Major cancer breakthrough by University of York team
Posted on 17 February 2000
A cancer research team at the University of York has achieved a dramatic breakthrough which scientists believe will lead to the development of new drugs to target and destroy the cause of cervical cancer, which affects overs half a million women worldwide.
In the UK, 5,000 new cases are recorded each year, resulting in 2,000 deaths from the disease.
Researchers are excited by possibilities that the development - said to be equivalent in importance to discovery of AZT in AIDS - could result in new understanding and treatment of other forms of cancer.
The York team under the direction of Professor Norman Maitland, together with structural biologists from the Chemistry department in York, and funded by the Harrogate-based charity, Yorkshire Cancer Research, has succeeded in determining the structure of a protein that controls the papillomavirus - the principal cause of cervical cancer.*
The discovery is the result of innovative technology in the production of crystals of the HPV protein, together with talented interdisciplinary work by a group of basic biologists and X-ray crystallographers.
It follows eight years of investigtion by the York team and should enable antiviral drugs to be designed specifically to control the cancer-causing segment of the protein.
A paper announcing the discovery is published in today's (Thursday, 17 February) issue of the scientific journal 'Nature'.
The breakthrough is expected to receive worldwide acclaim, especially in the United States, where teams are known to have been working on the same problem as the York scientists.
A number of major drug companies throughout the world have already shown interest in collaborating with the York cancer research team in development of new antiviral drugs made possible by the new findings.
Says Professor Maitland: "The discovery explains a lot of puzzling data from previous research here and in the USA. It opens the door for considerable further work and offers a real possibility of designing a drug to combat the cancer-causing human papillomaviruses.
"It has been achieved through the good inter-disciplinary atmosphere promoted in the University of York, but would not have been possible without the excellent funding collaboration of Yorkshire Cancer Research, and the unflagging support of the many dedicated fund raisers throughout the County."
Elaine King, Chief Executive of Yorkshire Cancer Research, the charity which for 75 years has funded multi-million pound research at universities and hospitals throughout Yorkshire, commented: "The York breakthrough is great news. The importance of the discovery by Professor Maitland and his team cannot be over-emphasised. It brings very real hope for sufferers of this wide-spread form of cancer."
The charity has funded new state of the art laboratories for the York research team, and the University's Biology department was recently awarded £21 million as part of the Government Wellcome Trust Joint Infrastructure Fund.
*The invention provides a crystallised module of a nuclear phosphoprotein and an assay and method of determining interactions with human papillomavirus E2 for use in drug design, particularly, though not exclusively, in designing antiviral agents with potential use in treating warts, proliferative skin lesion and carcinoma of the cervix.