The blood and tissue samples of brain cancer patients will be preserved in the Hunter for future research as part of a funding boost from the Mark Hughes Foundation.
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The biobank for brain cancer is being established at the Hunter Medical Research Institute and will allow patients to donate samples at various times during their brain cancer journey.
The samples will be preserved at minus 150 degrees Celsius to allow access to researchers and clinicians for many years into the future.
“In the bad old days, we would invent a new cancer treatment, give it to 30 or 40 people, watch it fail most of the time, and then discard that drug,” oncologist and clinical research fellow Craig Gedye said.
“These days, however, we recognise that for small subsets of patients a targeted treatment can work incredibly well.
“It’s only when you are gifted a large resource of samples and data that researchers can actually address these kinds of issues.
“It’s knowing the many similarities and differences in cancer types that helps us predict which patients will benefit from certain treatments and what new therapies are worth considering.”
Dr Gedye said cancers were moving targets that could return in an altered state from the original tumour.
The ability to keep track of that change would enable researchers to deliver new and better diagnostic, prognostic and predictive biomarkers.
“We can start to figure out precisely what kind of cancer someone has, what that cancer is going to mean in terms of their life, how aggressive it is and what their likely treatment response will be,” he said.
Former Kurri Kurri native Mark Hughes, 36, launched the eponymous foundation late last year after he was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour.
“Donating cancer samples at the time of surgery is a powerful, proactive and valuable donation that every patient can make to improve brain cancer research,” Mr Hughes said.
“The establishment of the Mark Hughes Foundation Brain Cancer Biobank will allow researchers to address a multitude of questions. To be able to fund such an important project is a great achievement in our first year for MHF, but this is only the beginning.”
The Mark Hughes Foundation will host a golf day at Crowne Plaza, Hunter Valley, on Friday, November 14, from 1pm. For more information phone Rob Flanagan on 0404 465 482 or Kane Bradley on 0423 525 335.
