Hope for future of children battling aggressive brain tumours

Children struck down with brain cancer have been given new hope with Queensland scientists hailing a breakthrough in the treatment of childhood cancer as potentially transformative.

Hannah Pringle with a photo of her daughter Ruby Pringle, who died from an aggressive brain tumour DIPG at the age of six in 2023. Picture: Steve Pohlner

Children struck down with brain cancer have been given new hope with Queensland scientists hailing a breakthrough in the treatment of childhood cancer as potentially transformative.

A world-leading research collaboration between QIMR Berghofer and Emory University in the US has shown that a potential new targeted therapy for childhood brain cancer is effective in infiltrating and killing tumour cells in preclinical models.

Hannah and Andrew Pringle with their daughters Tilly and Ruby. Ruby died in 2023 after a battle with brain cancer. Source: Supplied

The team believes the discovery will revolutionise treatment of the most common childhood brain cancer, medulloblastoma, but could apply to other brain cancers like glioblastoma (GBM) and diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG). The research has been published in Nature Communications.

Brisbane mum Hannah Pringle, who lost her six-year-old daughter Ruby to DIPG in 2023, told The Courier-Mail that the breakthrough offers much needed hope to the families of children living with brain cancer.

“I am so glad that behind the scenes scientists are working away to find solutions to the complicated puzzle of brain cancers and if that eventually leads to therapies for DIPG it would be wonderful,” she said.

Hannah Pringle with her daughter Ruby, who died in 2023. Source: Supplied

Brain cancer is the second leading cause of death in children in the developed world. For the children who survive, standard treatments have long-term impacts on their development and quality of life, particularly in small children and infants. When medulloblastoma recurs, the prognosis is usually extremely poor.

The research teams collaborated with US biopharmaceutical company, Curtana Pharmaceuticals, which has developed an experimental drug, CT-179. The researchers found that the drug effectively targets the protein OLIG2, which is a known stem cell marker crucial in the initiation and recurrence of brain cancers.

Professor Bryan Day, who leads QIMR Berghofer’s Sid Faithfull Brain Cancer Laboratory and is co-director of the Children’s Brain Cancer Centre in Australia, described the findings as a breakthrough.

“Brain cancer is an incredibly tough puzzle to solve. As researchers, what gets us out of bed every day is trying to solve that puzzle. This global research could potentially lead to new combination therapies that are less toxic, more effective, and improve outcomes for these young patients,” Professor Day said.

“Our study demonstrated that the drug CT-179, used in combination with standard radiation therapy prolonged survival in a range of preclinical medulloblastoma models, delayed recurrence of the disease, and increased the effectiveness of radiotherapy,” he said.

QIMR Berghofer post-doctoral researcher Yuchen (Michelle) Li, who was joint first author on the study, is hopeful this translational research can improve the quality of life of children with brain cancer in future.

Originally published as Hope for future of children battling aggressive brain tumours