Dr Sam Greenall from the Centre for Cancer Research has been
awarded the inaugural Ethan Davies Fellowship, to develop “dish-grown” tumour
cultures that can be used to screen new drug treatments for a rare type of brain
cancer.
Dr Greenall was announced as the inaugural recipient of the
Fellowship at an official launch hosted in Fremantle on October 8.
The Ethan Davies Fellowship was established by Shannon and
Christie-Lee Davies in recognition of their son Ethan, who is a survivor of
paediatric ependymoma. Ethan is now on the road to recovery from this rare
type of brain cancer.
Dr Greenall is an expert in evaluating and testing different
drugs and therapies for the treatment of adult and pediatric brain cancers. As
the inaugural Ethan Davies Fellow, Dr Greenall will be involved in tackling the
problem of getting patient-derived ependymoma to grow in dishes in the
laboratory.
At present, ependymoma tumours can only be grown in mice,
which is not effective for screening hundreds of drugs simultaneously to see
which is most effective at killing cancer cells.
The Fellowship will enable Dr Greenall to characterise
exactly what factors allow ependymoma tumours to grow, and
then grow these tumour cells in a dish in the lab.
If successful, this research will pave the way for
researchers to screen drugs rapidly and effectively, quickly identifying any
agents that kill ependymoma tumours for transfer into the clinic.
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