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Beatson Cancer Charity awarded £30,000 for a PhD research project which aims to make photodynamic therapy (PDT) more effective as a treatment for glioblastoma brain tumours.
Glioblastoma is the most frequently occurring and most aggressive form of brain cancer. It affects people of all ages, and causes a dramatic reduction in life expectancy, with most patients living for only one year after their diagnosis. One of the reasons for these poor outcomes is that it is impossible for neurosurgeons to remove all of the glioblastoma tumour cells because they infiltrate the surrounding normal brain. PDT involves the use of lasers during a neurosurgical procedure to damage and kill tumour cells that cannot be removed by the neurosurgeon. Clinical studies have shown that PDT is a safe treatment for glioblastoma, even when combined with standard radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and that some patients seem to benefit from it. However, none of the patients are cured and their tumours inevitable regrow within the area that was treated.
This research aims to understand why some glioblastoma cells are resistant to PDT, and to find new or existing drugs that could be combined with PDT to make it more effective. The research team’s early research has shown that cells treated with PDT don’t die immediately – this gives us some clues about the mechanisms they might be using to protect themselves.
Professor Anthony Chalmers (Chair of Clinical Oncology - University of Glasgow) and Dr Paul Brennan (Reader and Honorary Consultant Neurosurgeon - University of Edinburgh), will jointly support and train PhD student and neurosurgeon Dr Nazar Vasyliv as part of this project. The research team will work to identify exactly which molecules and pathways in the cell are responsible for resistance to PDT. They will then test a variety of drugs to see if these molecules can be targeted to overcome resistance.
“This research project will investigate a new form of treatment for glioblastoma and look at ways to make photodynamic therapy more effective as a treatment for this aggressive brain tumour. I'd like to thank Beatson Cancer Charity for the support. We hope the outcome will benefit those diagnosed with glioblastoma in the future.”
Professor Anthony Chalmers, Chair of Clinical Oncology at the University of Glasgow
For more information about this project, Email: funding@beatsoncancercharity.org
For further enquiries call our funding team on 0141 212 0505.
