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Studying Stomach Cancer

A unique research collaboration between an extended Bay of Plenty Maori whanau and biomedical scientists in Dunedin into an inherited type of stomach cancer has gained just under a million dollars in funding from the Health Research Council.

The research is an initiative of the Mt Maunganui whanau, which suffers from a high rate of aggressive, inherited gastric cancer. Other related whanau in Rotorua and Invercargill with familial gastric cancer will be included in the new project.

The whakapapa researchers, led by Pauline Harawira with Hauriana Taite, have charted the largest familial cancer genealogy of any international project working on this issue. Over the past 30 years, more than 30 people from the Tauranga whanau have died from gastric cancer. The rate in the wider New Zealand population is about one in 8,000.

The biomedical researchers have found a linkage to a chromosomal region which looks likely to provide a genetic test to identify carriers in the Mt Maunganui whanau. It's an important step, as research Parry Guilford, from Otago University's Cancer Genetics Laboratory says that 70% of carriers get stomach cancer.

"As a consequence, in some nuclear families, nearly every second child has developed stomach cancer."

In addition, the cancer strikes early, often in the teenage years, with the median age of onset around 28-30. Gastroscopic surveys will enable early detection of cancer development in carriers, with tests based on the presence or absence of specific mutations in the susceptibility gene.

About three years ago, the whanau began to look for assistance in dealing with the high cancer rate. Initial contact was made between the whanau's gastroenterologist and an Otago University medical professor while at a meeting in Tasmania, and the project developed following extensive consultation.

The partners have developed processes which guard cultural and scientific interests. All decisions are made jointly. For example, the whanau and the researchers have filed as joint owners of a patent, and will share any income arising from it. The study material is owned by the whanau, stored in the Dunedin laboratory separately from any other material and used only within that laboratory. Items are coded so that whanau members are not identifiable.