Tracy:

When I had the opportunity to set up my own lab, I chose to focus on pancreatic cancer. It was incredibly striking how little research there was for this disease, and there were no effective treatments. I recognised this as a place where I could make a difference.

In Australia, pancreatic cancer is a major killer and is expected to be our second most lethal cancer by 2030. More than half of those diagnosed die within the first six months. It’s a brutal disease.

Belinda and I met when we needed a leader for the clinical arm of our research. A colleague introduced us, and we haven’t looked back.

We’re all brighter because of Belinda! She brings a different point of view to each problem. Her priority is patient care, and my research investigates how patients end up there. When our insights overlap – there in the middle – that’s where we’re brighter together.

The new Hemstritch Centre of Excellence for Pancreatic Cancer Research, based at WEHI, will take the power of clinician-scientist collaboration further, faster. Backed by business leader, philanthropist and WEHI president Jane Hemstritch, the centre gives a much-needed boost – $8 million over 10 years – to accelerate effective treatments for pancreatic cancer. It stands as a tribute to Jane’s husband Philip Hemstritch and father-in-law Reginald Hemstritch who both died of the disease.

The funding supports PURPLE, a first-of-its-kind patient-focused portal integrating population data from hospitals in Australia and internationally, with tissue-based research designed to tackle the complexities of pancreatic cancer.

It’s Belinda’s brainchild and it will revolutionise our understanding of the patient journey, how we approach treatment development and support a pipeline of new drugs.

Also speeding up the search for the best existing drugs and new therapies, is the innovation of organoids. These are miniature tumours grown in the lab from patient biopsies.

Hundreds of drugs can be tested on organoids to find an effective match for a patient. They also help reveal how cancer tumours behave, which is crucial for designing new medicines.

Time and money have driven exceptional gains in treating other cancers. The discovery of immune therapies has been revolutionary for the management of melanoma, which previously was as devastating as pancreatic cancer.

It will be extraordinary when a drug we discover reaches its first patient. Watching it go from discovery to a life-changing treatment would be the ultimate career milestone – helping thousands, even millions of people.

Belinda:

I started PURPLE in 2016 during my five-year Philip Hemstritch Centenary Fellowship in pancreatic cancer (also supported by Jane). Working with pancreatic cancer patients at hospitals in London, I saw the need for better data to drive research and treatment.

PURPLE is a multi-sided platform – a clinical registry, a virtual biobank collecting patient tissue samples and data, but most importantly it’s bringing the lab work into the mix. This will be the game-changer, circulating insights from clinic to patient, to lab, and back to patient, leading to the development of urgently needed therapies.

We hoped for 10 cancer centres to join PURPLE. Now 53 work with us across Australia, New Zealand, Singapore – and discussions are happening with Japan and Thailand. We’re tracking over 5500 patients’ treatment journeys.

The sheer scale of this initiative is driving our trajectory at an exponential rate. We’re harnessing a global network of brilliant minds, creating momentum that far surpasses what any single team could achieve.

PURPLE unites oncologists, surgeons, scientists, even allied health like dieticians, and carers who have lost loved ones – all working together. It will shift the landscape for pancreatic cancer.

This collaboration – blending diverse expertise – that’s where Tracy and I have eureka moments.

Already, PURPLE has helped fast-track clinical trials that aim to establish circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) – a simple blood test taken after cancer surgery – as a global tool for guiding chemotherapy decisions for early-stage pancreatic cancer.

We’re also using artificial intelligence to analyse medical scans, turning grey images into precise numbers to spot subtle changes. PURPLE’s ‘big data’, at the fingertips of hundreds of experts, will facilitate pattern identification, enabling faster diagnoses.

In future, patients will click into the portal to find a clinical trial specific to their tumour type, simplifying current options enormously.

Tracy and I agree Jane’s vision sparked all this. We’re sincerely grateful for her generosity.

Her long-term philanthropic investment is the gift of time and resources to explore complex research questions, like understanding how the immune cells of the patients I work with can ‘talk’ to Tracy’s organoids.

If a treatment like immune therapy could provide lifelong immunity for pancreatic cancer patients, like it has for other cancers, then we’ll witness a truly life-saving breakthrough.

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Image: Pancreatic cancer trailblazers, Dr Belinda Lee (left) and Associate Professor Tracy Putoczki.