The Brainchild Foundation is very proud to have awarded $300,000 over the next 3 years to support the vital study being undertaken by Dr Marija Kiska of the Wainwright Lab (UQ). This Fellowship, named in honour of our Founder and former Chairman Dr Martin Wood allows Dr Kiska to work on a clinical trial project over the next 3 years, creating personalised mRNA vaccines for paediatric brain cancer patients by targeting genetic variations in the individual patients’ tumour. Dr Kiska provided a layman explanation for us below:

More children are killed by brain cancer than any other disease. Since the establishment of treatment consisting of surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy over 30 years ago overall survival has not improved and the incidence of disease is rising. Despite aggressive treatment, over 30% of all patients will not respond to current therapy, or will ultimately relapse. With the support of the Martin Wood Brainchild Fellowship Dr Marija Kiska will work in two areas where we really need research breakthroughs.

Dr Kiska has developed techniques that enable the monitoring of spinal fluid to detect brain cancer DNA, and in earlier studies with Dr Tim Hassall and colleagues at QCH demonstrated that not only could the tumour DNA be detected, it could also be used to examine the response of the tumour to therapy.  On this basis, new studies will follow patients from diagnosis, then treatment and beyond to look for the very first signs of relapse so we can intervene early to improve survival.
One of the greatest revolutions in our treatment of cancer is beginning, and that is the use of vaccines, not to prevent cancer, but to treat it. Recent studies have indicated that other hard to treat cancers such as melanoma and pancreatic cancer may be treated using an mRNA vaccine based upon the technology developed to prevent Covid 19. The work of Dr Kiska will use the genetic variation present in the DNA of each individual paediatric brain cancer patient and design a vaccine intended to kill the cancer.  This work requires the integration of diverse expertise in neuro-oncology, immunology, bioinformatics and cell biology. The elements of this program have been put together and we have begun our efforts which will lead us to clinical trial of this potential breakthrough approach.