By trust deed dated 23 February 1982 Dr Brian Hagan founded a trust ‘for the promotion of scientific knowledge…to solve the cause of cancer and to develop new methods of treatment through research’ by the formation of the Biophysical Cancer Research Foundation. The trust was established pending incorporation of a company limited by guarantee to be called the ‘Biophysical Cancer Research Foundation Limited’. Despite a panel of world class medical scientists the Federal Government withheld tax deductible status in 1982-83 by requiring proof of the panel’s cancer research grant approval expertise. This misunderstood the purpose of the foundation which was for the foundation to conduct the research itself and not to assess applications for others. So, the foundation was not able to pursue its objectives at that time and Dr Hagan’s passing intervened in the interim period. Therefore, this trust is now being fulfilled 39 years later! Dr Hagan went on to spend many years on cancer research projects both in collaboration with other scientists and on his own. It was not until 2017 that Dr Hagan’s daughter found the missing cancer research files before she and her brother Christopher Hagan recommenced the valuable work started by Dr Hagan which has now culminated in the formation of the foundation this year.
These files included key material on Dr Hagan’s cancer research including GGF and a radiology project which Dr Hagan published with a past colleague in the journal Medical Hypothesis. This project had attracted the attention of the media with full scale feature articles published in the Australian in 1982. The concept behind the project was that the Fourier Transform governed biological systems – to take one example of the use of the Fourier Transform in medicine the Fast Fourier Transform has been used to analyse the ECG signal’s P, Q, R, S and T waves representing functions of the heart. Also, it was reported in May 2021 that 19 patients in South Australia and New South Wales suffering Parkinson’s disease had benefited from infra-red light therapy causing changes in their gut microbiome. Continuing Dr Hagan’s basic research would involve use of a Fourier Transform technology at the cellular level. This might take the form of testing the impact of waveforms upon cell growth and cancer from the viewpoint of determining what type of waveforms inhibit or activate normal and abnormal cell growth. Such research would aim to develop new radiological techniques for both testing and therapeutic use.
Reflecting the 1982 trust deed the aims of the Biophysical Cancer Research Foundation Limited are:
The research, development and promotion of medical science, knowledge and methodologies utilizing biology, physics and mathematics with the objective of solving the cause or causes of cancer to enable effective treatments or cures for patients suffering from cancer.
Dr Hagan’s areas of research included cancer, genomics, bio mathematics and physics with a special interest in the DNA code and bio mathematics. He was a researcher with the Queen Elizabeth II Research Institute associated with Sydney University and former Chairman medical staff Prince of Wales hospital, Sydney. He was published in The Lancet, Medical Hypothesis, Medical Journal of Australia and Applied Physics Communications. He had published 7 medical science papers with many more unpublished. Dr Hagan had sought to form the Biophysical Cancer Research foundation as an organization by harnessing a formidable scientific network that he had assembled including two members of Jet Propulsion laboratory- Caltech in the United States (Professor Hank Keyser had won the NASA achievement award and the other professor, Professor Felix Gutman, had also received the NASA achievement award, authored 115 papers, written 6 books and had invented the solid state device used in 80% of cardiac pacemakers in the United States.) Yet when applying for a mere approval for research tax deductible status in Australia the Director General of the Department of Health advised “…the publications cited by each member…are not in the nature of research publications normally associated with members of Scientific Advisory Committees”. Despite this they had already identified one member - Dr Bransgrove who “held a post in the Research School of Surgery at Sydney University”. (He also conducted his own research laboratory). Another was a Dean of Faculty of Mathematical & Computing Sciences at The NSW Institute of Technology. Another, Dr Graham Grant had not only made a career from research and development but his inventions had become working medical devices used in clinical practice. The failure to approve granting of tax deductible status by the Director General stymied any chance of utilizing the world class cancer research team that Dr Hagan had assembled.
Selected cancer research and allied projects appear below where the GGF technology could contribute to increase the prospects for success in cancer therapies or other therapies.
Cancer is bound to the essential processes of life – cell cycles, tissue generation and the key sub units of life – proteins in their many forms and functions. Viruses, bacteria and archaea are thought to be symbiotic processes at the cutting edge of origin of life and are highly relevant to cancer research. Cancer vaccines were preceded by virus vaccines. Indeed some viruses cause cancer and yet some viruses are rendered benign to be used as vector carriers of cancer medication. The promise of immunotherapy where the body’s immune system is recruited to fight cancer just like it fights viruses and bacteria is offset by the specialized ‘patient centric’ nature of clinical immunotherapy. For example, researchers have lamented the lack of automated manufacturing processes for CarT therapies amongst others as opposed to the present process of taking samples from the patient to develop a cancer vaccine for reinjection with a vector carrying the medicine into the patient. A universal cancer medicine rather than specialized treatment is sought which requires a generic cancer vaccine as opposed to this customized approach. So, a universal cancer medicine is paramount just as a universal flu vaccine has been the holy grail for flu vaccines. Even when a cancer vaccine is found then as with any drug- biologic, biosimilar or conventional – the toxicity, side effects or even rejection by the body for whatever reason is a key factor. Success rates for drugs quoted at 1 in every 100 developed is often explained by toxicity. Some of the most advanced biologic drugs that hold promise for cancer are the aptamer ligands that can be highly specific yet well tolerated by the patient. They are an emerging field with many peptide based cancer drugs under development or undergoing clinical trials. Peptides made with such new techniques as GGF Codeweaver hold much promise for great advances in cancer therapy in the future. We believe that the GGF technology has much to contribute to the use of peptides for both cancer therapeutics and diagnostics. Oncolytic viruses that attack cancer are also being used as carrier vectors to deliver cancer drugs to patients which could carry GGF peptides targeted to home into the right receptor in the cancer cell or antigen on the cancer cell surface. We are proposing using ‘personalized healthcare’ GGF designed peptides to conjugate with oncolytic viruses for improved cancer treatment. It is intended that these harmless viruses with non toxic peptides could become the ‘golden bullets’ that cancer researchers have always been seeking.
Thus, widening the scope and range of candidate drugs with ‘smart methods’ such as the GGF Geneseeker or GGF Codeweaver should be valuable tools for medical science. In particular, the Codeweaver technology could be a ‘game changer’ for many cancer and allied projects due to its ability to aid modelling of candidate molecules for any given cancer or part thereof, sub unit protein molecule or other antigens. How?
Thus it is hoped that workable ligands docking with the target molecule can be identified as a prelude to producing biologic or biosimilar cancer drugs or indeed for other diseases.
The search for a universal cancer vaccine across different cancers has become a possibility with the discovery of certain features common to many cancers. Mentioned below is one instance of childhood cancer, Neuroblastoma where researchers have discovered a process where two proteins bind to drive cancer growth in that disease. Researchers believe the same process could be common to 6 other major cancers. Thus, a ‘generic’ ligand across different cancers that docks or reacts to inhibit such binding might become a semi universal cancer drug.
Neuroblastoma is a cancer forming in certain types of nerve tissue caused by a genetic mutation causing tumours with histology showing tumour cells as small,round and blue, with rosette patterns. The GGF technology has its core concepts founded in geometrical principles of cell growth and in particu...
Biology author Janine Benyus describes how nature can help medical science in her book Biomimicry* where she explains how we can learn from nature’s proteins. She describes the ingenious way mollusks use their proteins to generate strong calcium shells “…the mollusk releases templating proteins into...
A number of cancer research organisations target pancreatic cancer as it is one of the most difficult cancers to treat. No simple early detection method, multiple genetic alterations in tumour cells and limited ability for drugs to reach the tumour provide serious obstacles to viable therapeutic sol...
Prominent cancer research/treatment network organization Omico has called for the Australian government to provide $280 million in funding for ‘molecular testing’ to avoid unnecessary radiation and chemo therapy. This would be achieved by a patient database linking their data to relevant genes and p...
Causes for Alzheimer’s disease have ranged from beta -amyloid clumps forming in the gut before migrating to the brain (New Scientist, Alice Klein, 25 July 2020-p14) to neuronal tangles caused by the tau protein/exosomes leaking from the lysosomes of neurons. In an article, “Toxic Protein Discovery i...