Granulosa Cell Tumour Foundation

Vol. 20 - July, 2008 - Auckland, New Zealand

Kia Ora!

Dear Members, Friends and Supporters of the GCTF NZ Foundation;

Well 2008 is already halfway done yet it seems like just yesterday we were mapping out what we want to accomplish this year!

In this issue of our newsletter we focus, primarily, on a report by Dr. Shelling on the research that he is starting on our behalf. You have probably heard second-hand updates from me over the last few months, but I think it is important for you to hear directly (more or less) from Dr. Shelling so you can fully appreciate what we are working towards and how the research funds you provide are spent.

Later in this issue we have an update on the work being done by Dr. Cui involving "Leukocyte Infusion Therapy" (LIFT). Finally we cover some general issues about the foundation, our website, and our on-going effort to research GCT.

An Update From Dr. Shelling

We are delighted to report that the Granulosa Cell Tumour Foundation project is underway. Thanks to some hard work at the start of the year, by two of my ex-PhD students, Dr Wendy Watkins and Dr Anna Ramachandran, we have begun to grow cells from the two granulosa cell tumour cell lines that are widely used in the research community. With help from PhD student, Anita Muthukaruppan, and Honours student, Roseanne Rosario, are now planning our first real experiments.

Dr. Andrew Shelling

As part of her Honours degree, Roseanne has completed a thorough literature review on Granulosa Cell Tumours, to identify which genes and gene pathways are important to target, and she came up with a list of 20 genes that we will investigate first. The first experiments will be to look at whether there are abnormal levels of these genes in the two Granulosa Cell Tumours, and then proceed to “knock down” the most important of these genes. We want to determine whether knocking out some of these genes will reduce the growth rate of the cell lines, and/or make them more sensitive to potential treatments.

The next question we want to ask is whether the cell lines are a good model of Granulosa Cell Tumours in real life. We plan to do this in two ways.

First, we have sent some DNA to a friend and collaborator at the Peter MaCullum Institute in Melbourne, Ian Campbell, to look at the “genotype” or genetic state of the DNA in the two cell lines. We hope to see whether some parts of the cell lines are consistently deleted (removing an important gene) or amplified (having too many copies of an dangerous gene). This work could help to identify more genes that are important and unique in Granulosa Cell Tumours, for further investigation.

Our research team includes Anita Muthukaruppan, Roseanne Rosario, Dr. Wendy Watkins, and Dr. Andrew Shelling (l to r)

Second, we are growing up the two cell lines, and extracting the messenger RNA from them, and then looking at a “microarray” analysis of all the genes being expressed in the cell lines. We want to see if the two cell lines are similar to each other, and/or similar to any other tumours. As so little is known about Granulosa Cell Tumours, we would like to create a “fingerprint” of gene expression, to determine whether there are some consistent patterns of pathways of genes that are being turned on or off, that may guide us to important areas to attack.

Roseanne working with one of the 2 GCT cell lines

This work will form the bulk of Roseanne’s Honours thesis, and will be complete by October. She may not complete all of it, but we hope there will be enough preliminary data generated to allow us to see the clear steps forward from that point. It is very exciting times, we have the best technology at hand, the best students and scientists, and the prospect of ongoing collaboration with Melbourne (Professor Ian Campbell), and we have had preliminary discussions with Professor Peter Fuller from Prince Henry’s Institute of Medical Research.

The research funding we have available has been crucial in getting these early stages of the project underway, and we hope that the early results will provide a launching pad for future plans.

On behalf of the researchers involved in the project, I would like to thank the GCT Foundations and the supporters of the Foundation for their hard work, in giving us the opportunity to be involved in such important and life-changing research.

Leukocyte InFusion Therapy (LIFT)

In our previous newsletter we reported extensively on the research efforts of Dr. Zheng Cui and Granulocyte InFusion Therapy (now renamed Leukocyte InFusion Therapy).

Within the past month there has been publication of calls for patients to partake in a clinical trial, which is exactly what we were working to help achieve when we coordinated (and paid for) the collection of representative blood samples from here (down under).  Those samples helped Dr. Cui and his staff confirm some of their ideas and helped them finalise their plan for this trial.

Unfortunately, Dr. Cui has informed us that the trial has been placed on hold by the Institutional Review Board of Wake Forest University.  He thoroughly believes that this is a temporary hold-up and that the trial will eventually open as planned.  We will keep you informed as more developments occur.

Website Changes

We have recently made some changes to the Donation page to try and make it easier for you to know what your credit card will be recording since we have to charge it in New Zealand dollars. We have also added the capability to register a recurring, or periodic, donation that will make it easier on your budget by allowing you to spread a donation over longer time periods if you prefer.

The periodic donations are not automatically charged to your card because we do not collect your credit card information.  What we do, instead, is record that you want to donate on a monthly basis (as an example) and then every month we send you an email with a link that will take you to our secure credit card processor where you can authorise the charge.

It is one more way you can provide support for our research on a continual basis!

The GCTF NZ "Cell Line"

You may have noticed on the right hand side of this page a list of "Latest Forum Topics" and be wondering what they are.  They represent the latest entries on our forum for GCTF NZ supporters where you will find, over time, an ever-growing resource of questions, answers, contacts, and discussions that are designed to help fill the "information gap" about GCT that we are all struggling with.

Anyone may read the forum, and it only requires a simple registration process if you want to ask a question or respond to someone else's post.   The discussions are focused, searchable and easily retrieved if you want to go back and re-visit something that was said in the past.  We hope that you will join the list of those who utilise this resource on a regular basis and add your insight to our collective knowlege.

Et Cetera

We have now registered with 3 branches of Amazon to receive commissions when you shop through our links.  We recently added Amazon.co.uk, for those of you in the UK and Europe, to our existing links with Amazon.com and Amazon.ca.  Remember, it adds nothing to the cost of your purchase but generates additional funding for us.  In fact, so far we have raised about $260!  I have to say, however, that most of that is from our Canadian supporters!   So let's go, ladies (and gentlemen), and remember to use our link (and save it as a Bookmark called 'Amazon') when you shop Amazon.

And, in closing, let me remind everyone that our jewellery catalogue is ready and waiting for those of you who can find a way to host a Jewels for Research party.  Obviously our researchers have gone out on a limb to start doing work on our behalf.  It is incumbent on us to take up the challenge of giving them what they need in order for them to give us what we want!

Thanks for your support!
Sofi
Managing Director

Raise more research money, shop via our Amazon link!
Choose either Amazon.com
or Amazon.ca (for Canada)
or Amazon.co.uk (for UK and EU)

Latest Forum Topics
17th August: Review of Literature on GCT by sofi 12th August: Prognostic indicators, etc. by Sues 12th August: Screening for recurrent by mc 21st July: Some Reassurance by Mike