Professor Andrew Scott of the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute (La Trobe University School of Cancer) and Austin Health is one of only two Victorian researchers awarded the prestigious grant.
Professor Scott, with a world-class team of clinicians and scientists from around Australia, will work on improving prognosis and better predicting a glioblastoma patient’s likely response to therapy, along with their likelihood of resistance to treatment. They aim to achieve this by utilising an imaging technique for detecting amino acid metabolism in brain tumours using Positron Emission Tomography (PET), in a clinical trial of more than 200 patients.
The gifted researcher was handpicked by an international panel of experts for his ingenious project.
“The Cure Brain Cancer Foundation grant is enabling sophisticated image analysis of PET and MRI scans in patients participating in a multi-centre Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) funded trial, which we hope will allow more accurate treatment and improve glioblastoma patient outcomes,.” Professor Scott said.
Michelle Stewart, CEO of Cure Brain Cancer Foundation said the latest grants are part of Cure Brain Cancer Foundation’s program to rapidly increase Australian brain cancer research capacity and takes the Foundation’s commitment to innovative brain cancer research via these grants to more than $1 million in the past year alone.
“These projects are at the cutting-edge of brain cancer research, doing things differently to improve outcomes for brain cancer patients. We must support these innovative projects if we’re going to rapidly improve brain cancer survival.”
Since 2013, Cure Brain Cancer Foundation has committed more than $18 million to brain cancer research, backing 41 research projects and enabled the investigation of almost 120,000 drugs.
