Award honour for cancer researcher

Logan Walker

A health researcher who is helping find better ways to fight breast cancer has been recognised with an international award.

Logan Walker, a member of the Cancer Genetics Research Group in Christchurch, received the Johnson and Johnson Research Student Award at the International Congress of Human Genetics in Brisbane.

The award is for the presentation of research that shows clear potential for the development of anti-cancer drugs. Presenters of the award said it marked Mr Walker as having high potential for a successful research career.

He received the award, and $2500, before thousands of top scientists and clinical experts from about 70 countries who had gathered for the five-yearly congress.

"It is recognition on an international stage. I'm just coming to the end of my PhD and it does bode well for the future," Mr Walker said.

The research group's leader, Associate Professor Christine Morris, said the award was not only giving recognition to Mr Walker, but the work the whole group was doing at the University of Otago's Christchurch School of Medicine.

Breast cancer is usually diagnosed and treated as a single disease.

But new research from the group and its colleagues is showing that this is not the case.

Tumour cells from different patients have shown different genetic characteristics, a discovery which opens the way to more accurate diagnosis and better treatment.

Ms Morris said breast cancer tumours were poorly understood, but leukaemia research had shown the way to identifying different genetic types in cancers.