Brain Cancer Research Lab

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 (https://www.wehi.edu.au/researcher/jim-whittle/), Dr Saskia Freytag (https://www.wehi.edu.au/researcher/saskia-freytag/), and Dr Sarah Best (https://www.wehi.edu.au/researcher/sarah-best/) are working to improve the diagnosis for brain cancer patients using advanced diagnostics, as well as developing new models to understand resistance, and investigating novel ways to treat brain cancer.

Unravelling the complexities of adult glioma.

Characterisation of the heterogeneous glioma tumour microenvironment at single cell spatial resolution
Moffet et al., biorvix 2023: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.13.531204v1

Adaptation of new methods
Flow Cytometry protocol for all brain cell types
CNVkit for GeoMx data: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.13.531204v1

Establishment of multiple innovative clinical trials (https://thebraincancercentre.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/MR_Brain-POP_FINAL.pdf)