BY CAMERON TARAGEL
The Mark Hughes Foundation has donated a landmark $18.9 million philanthropic gift to the University of Newcastle to fast track brain cancer research.
The announcement this morning now brings the MHF's total contribution to the university to over $36 million.
The donation places it as one of the largest philanthropic investments in brain cancer nationally and the university's biggest donation to date.
The foundation and university hope to collaborate to find a cure for brain cancer as it is the leading cause of cancer deaths in children and adults under 40.
Under previous donations, the university's Mark Hughes Foundation Centre for Brain Cancer Research was established in 2022.
The collaboration will further strengthen Newcastle's current research centres for brain cancer and help translate current research into a clinical practice, allowing for more treatment options.
Mark Hughes Foundation Centre Director, Professor Mike Fay says the gift has boosted the first phase of research.
"We're building research platforms, forming partnerships, developing new drug developments and clinical trials," he said.
"Which is absolutely going to change the outlook for brain cancer patients across Australia." he said..
With the new funding, Professor Fay said the next 5 years will be taking research and implementing it practically.
"One of the things we are planning to develop is a treatment called theranostic treatment," he said.
"We give the patient a drug, initially it's got an imaging radionuclide on the back of it and then put the patient in a scanner so we can see where it's going in the body," he said.
"We change that over for a therapy isotope once we know the patient's appropriate for that sort of treatment," he said.
"It then floats around the body and binds to the brain cancer and we hope helps destroy it." he said.
Professor Fay hopes the new treatments like the blood test for cancer will allow the foundation to explore new treatments as quickly as possible.
"Some will be new drugs. Others will be drugs that already exist that we've found new uses for." he said.
The foundation and centre also hopes that raising awareness of brain cancer will help speed up research.
"We think with all this extra attention on brain cancer that things are starting to move an awful lot faster." he said.
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| Professor Mike Fay |
