Gut Cancer
Bowel cancer is a preventable disease, if early bowel cancers are detected they can be removed and >95% of patients are cured. Yet over 4000 Australians still die from this cancer each year. We need to do better to prevent, find and treat these cancers.
Projects in the lab focus on finding the hidden, early cancers that are not found by current population bowel cancer screening tests. We combine recent technological advances to develop new tests to better detect these lesions and predict which will become killers. We will rapidly move our best candidates to existing clinical cohorts for evaluation, to expedite translation to the clinic.
Together with our Australian research partners, we also assess personalised treatment regimes for metastatic disease using patient samples grown in a dish. We have used this approach to guide therapy choice for patients with advanced disease.
We are interested in how the bacterial community in our gut is changed in cancer, the role this plays in promoting this disease and whether we can harness microbes as sensors and treatment delivery vehicles of cancer. This may lead to a probiotic supplement for high risk people to assist with bowel cancer detection or prevention in the future.
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Lead researcher
Dr Susan Woods
Dr Susan Woods is a biomedical scientist with expertise in modelling cancer associated genetic alterations using CRISPR/Cas9 genome engineering, patient-derived organoid culture and advances in small animal imaging. She heads the Gut Cancer Group located at the South Australia Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) and is a Beat Cancer SA Mid-Career Fellow (2019-2021). She trained with Nobel Laureate J. Michael Bishop (UCSF), Professor Nick Hayward (QIMR-B) and Associate Professor Dan Worthley (SAHMRI). Her research integrates state-of-the-art approaches to address clinical needs for bowel cancer.
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Research team
- Dr Susan Woods - Lead researcher
- Dr Laura Vrbanac
- Dr Josephine Wright
- Dr Jia Ng
- Dr Hiroki Kobayashi
- Miss Georgette Radford
- Miss Elaine Thomas
- Mr Jarrad Goyne
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Partnerships
Partner Institution/Organisation Associate Professor Daniel Worthley South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) Professor Robert Ramsay Peter Mac Cancer Centre Associate Professor Tarik Sammour Royal Adelaide Hospital/University of Adelaide Professor Jeff Hasty University of California San Diego, USA Associate Professor Tal Danino Columbia University, NY, USA Associate Professor Nicholas Arpaia Columbia University, NY, USA Associate Professor Helen Abud Monash Professor Tony Burgess WEHI -
Related areas of research
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