“Brain-POP” will place Melbourne at the fore of brain cancer research and drive development of more targeted and personalised treatments.

The world-first clinical trial platform will hand scientists a powerful new tool to track how potential new therapies work. Tumour samples will be collected for comparison before and after treatment with novel therapies, to yield new insights into how they affect the brain.

With survival gains lagging those seen for other cancers, Dr Jim Whittle says Brain-POP (brain perioperative) was part of efforts to “radically change the way that drugs are developed and the way that clinical trials are run for brain cancer”.

“The Brain-POP platform offers a unique approach to help us test whether a drug actually gets into the brain and find out if it’s having the effect we want,” says Dr Whittle, who is Lab Head at The Brain Cancer Centre and also a Peter Mac oncologist.

“This is what we need to invest our efforts into - the most powerful and promising therapies, stopping the development of those that don’t work and delivering far better outcomes for brain cancer patients.

“We hope that by demonstrating the effectiveness of our unique trial method, we can scale Brain-POP nationally so that every patient diagnosed in Australia will in future have access to this new standard of care.”

The initiative, which has just received $16 million Victorian Government funding, will be led by The Brain Cancer Centre along with research partners WEHI, The Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH), The Royal Children’s Hospital and also Peter Mac.

Minister for Innovation, Medical Research and the Digital Economy, The Hon Jaala Pulford MP, said the funding over four years would support a globally unique research program benefiting children, adolescents and adults with primary brain cancer and brain metastases.  

"We urgently need to find more effective and curative treatments for brain cancers. As a global leader in cancer care and medical research, Victoria is perfectly positioned to lead this ground-breaking work," Minister Pulford said.  

Professor Kate Drummond, RMH Director of Neurosurgery, said the integrated trial program would draw on expertise from researchers and clinicians across Melbourne’s biomedical precinct and "establish Victoria at the forefront of brain cancer research”.

One Australian is diagnosed with brain cancer every five hours and more children die from brain cancer in Australia than any other disease.

Contacts:

For more information contact the Peter Mac Communications team on 0417 123 048.

Or WEHI communications on 0475 751 811 / [email protected]