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Brain Cancer Biobanking Australia (BCBA) is a virtual biobank hub established to provide researchers easy access to the amount, quality and type of tissue and associated data they need to accelerate both paediatric and adult translational brain cancer research.

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News

  • A Novel Approach in Brain Cancer Clinical Trials

    September 2022

    The clinical trial landscape is dominated by new drugs and treatment - but what if only a small change to an already established, standard treatment could lead to better outcomes? BCBA Steering Committee member, A/Prof Craig Gedye, is leading this novel approach with the establishment of the MAGMA (Multi-Arm GlioblastoMa Australasia) clinical trial.

    “We’re aiming to use multiple innovations in trial design to test changes in the way we use our existing treatments for brain cancer; changes we hope will have big impacts for future patients,” Gedye said.

    The trial is currently testing temozolomide – a chemotherapy drug commonly used to treat brain cancer – and making simple adjustments to when and how it is delivered within the current treatment protocol.

    “These kinds of simple questions have led to significant improvements in other cancers”, he said
    “It’s changed how we recommend treatment to people with prostate cancer, ovarian cancer and other cancers”.

    The MAGMA trial is currently open at hospitals across Australia for people newly diagnosed with glioblastoma (GBM). Please click here for more information. 

  • Advancing Brain Cancer Research in the ACT

    August 2022

    BCBA consortium member Professor Leonie Quinn has developed the ACT’s first brain cancer biobank. The Head of Genome Science and Cancer Division at John Curtin School of Medical Research established the Canberra Brain Cancer Collaborative to enable biobanking and genomic-based brain cancer research, to benefit patients in the ACT and around the world.

    “I am looking forward to building our collection and ensuring the samples are accessible to all Australian researchers as part of BCBA’s National Brain Cancer Biospecimen Register,” she said.

    The new biobank will support the clinical research of Professor Quinn’s lab to better understand and identify mutations driving brain cancer and make important progress in developing new personalised brain cancer treatments.

    “This will be critical for enabling targeted drug discovery research and improved outcomes for patients”.

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