WEHI Wednesday Seminar hosted by Associate Professor Marie-Liesse Labat
 

Drs Saskia Freytag, James Whittle and Sarah Best
Laboratory Heads – Brain Cancer Centre, Personalised Oncology division – Cancer Research & Treatments Theme, WEHI

Unveiling the fourth dimension:  A multi-omics approach to brain cancer research

 

Davis Auditorium

Join via SLIDO enter code #WEHIWednesday

Including Q&A session
 

Every five hours an Australian is diagnosed with brain cancer, a devastating illness that kills more children in Australia than any other disease and more people under 40 than any other cancer. Currently, we lack effective treatments for many brain cancers, making this a terminal diagnosis for many patients. The major challenge is that resistance to treatment always occurs and is poorly understood. In the Brain Cancer Research Laboratory, Dr Jim Whittle, Dr Saskia Freytag, and Dr Sarah Best are working to improve the diagnosis for brain cancer patients using advanced diagnostics, developing new models to understand resistance, and investigating novel ways to treat brain cancer. 

Drs Saskia Freytag, Jim Whittle and Sarah Best co-lead the Brain Cancer Research Laboratory with a strong focus on implementing emerging spatial technologies to better understand the immense heterogeneity of adult glioma. Saskia (bioinformatics lead) brings her expertise from single cell analysis and genomics in neural development and disease to establish cutting-edge single cell and spatial omics technologies to detangle the heterogeneity of brain cancer. Jim (clinical lead) is a Neuro Oncologist and has extensive experience in translating pre-clinical discoveries for clinical trials. Sarah (fundamental biology lead) is a VCA Mid-Career Fellow and brings her expertise from multiple solid tumour types to implement advanced metabolomics and generation of novel mouse models of brain cancer. Together, the lab aims to understand resistance mechanisms, improve surgical methods, and identify novel treatment strategies to improve the lives of patients with brain cancer.  

All welcome!