26 May Grey May: The fight against brain cancer
May is Brain Cancer Awareness Month. This year, we’re shining a light on three Australian researchers whose Brain Foundation-funded projects are opening up new frontiers in the fight against glioblastoma, the deadliest form of brain cancer.
Brain cancer is unforgiving. Around 1,900 Australians are diagnosed each year, and approximately 1,500 will die from the disease. Glioblastoma (GBM), the most common and aggressive form, carries a median survival of just 15 months. Despite decades of research, treatment options have remained largely unchanged, and a cure remains out of reach.
But that picture is beginning to shift. Across Australia, researchers are approaching glioblastoma from new angles – and the Brain Foundation is proud to have supported their work.
Finding a New Target: Dr Briony Gliddon (2024 Grant Recipient)
At Adelaide University, Dr Briony Gliddon and her team have been investigating glioblastoma at a molecular level, focusing on an enzyme called sphingosine kinase 2 (SK2) that appears to drive tumour growth.
“Glioblastomas are lethal brain tumours with no effective therapies,” she says. “The survival rates for patients with glioblastoma have remained unchanged for nearly 30 years – this really inspired me to forge my career in brain tumour research.”
Using CRISPR technology and patient-derived tumour cells, the team confirmed SK2 as a promising drug target. They also tested SK2 inhibitors alongside temozolomide, the current standard chemotherapy, finding moderate synergy between the two, a potentially important finding for future treatment combinations.
Most significantly, blocking SK2 also showed promise against recurrent glioblastoma, which currently has no standard treatment.
“Our finding that inhibition of SK2 kills these cells is therefore both significant and exciting,” Dr Gliddon says.
Identifying a viable target in recurrent glioblastoma is a meaningful step forward, opening a potential new treatment pathway for patients at the most difficult stage of the disease.
From left: Dr Briony Gliddon, Prof Amirali Popat and Dr Stanley Stylli
Smarter Drug Delivery: Prof Amirali Popat (2023 Grant Recipient)
One of the greatest challenges in treating brain cancer is the blood-brain barrier – the brain’s own protective filter that prevents many drugs from entering. Even when treatments show promise in the lab, delivering them effectively to a tumour deep within the brain remains incredibly difficult.
Professor Amirali Popat at the University of Queensland is tackling this challenge head on.
His Brain Foundation-funded project focused on encapsulating the chemotherapy drug temozolomide, currently the only oral chemotherapy approved for GBM, inside smart nanoparticles designed to cross the blood-brain barrier and target tumour cells directly.
The goal is to improve how much of the drug actually reaches the tumour, reduce the doses required, and potentially delay the treatment resistance that so often develops in glioblastoma.
Results published in the Journal of Nanobiotechnology in 2025 showed the nanoparticles could shrink tumour-like structures by around 30 per cent and reduce cancer cell colonies by approximately 40 per cent in laboratory tests – encouraging early findings that pave the way for further development.
Outsmarting Treatment Resistance: Dr Stanley Stylli (2022 Grant Recipient)
Even when treatment initially works, glioblastoma has a troubling ability to adapt – developing resistance to chemotherapy and radiation and returning more aggressively than before. Understanding why this happens is critical to developing therapies that can stay ahead of the disease.
Dr Stanley Stylli, from the Royal Melbourne Hospital has been investigating how GBM cells change and become resistant after multiple rounds of treatment, and whether existing FDA-approved drugs, developed for other conditions, could be repurposed to block the biological processes that drive tumour invasion and recurrence.
The repurposing approach is particularly promising: rather than starting from scratch in drug development (a process that can take decades and billions of dollars) – researchers can investigate drugs that are already safe and approved for human use.
”These exciting results provide the necessary preliminary data to further explore the therapeutic efficacy of a polytherapeutic treatment protocol and possibly taking us one step closer to the transfer of this type of approach into the clinic for GBM patients,” he shared in his final report.
Dr Stylli’s work has been published in international peer-reviewed journals and continues to inform new directions in GBM treatment research.
These three projects represent very different strategies – a new molecular target, a smarter delivery system, a repurposed drug. Glioblastoma is a complex, aggressive and adaptable disease – and overcoming it will take multiple approaches working in parallel.
The Brain Foundation exists to ensure that talented Australian researchers have the funding to pursue these critical questions – even when the path is uncertain, even when progress is measured in small steps, and even when the answers may still be years away.
There is no cure without research. And this Grey May, we’re proud to stand behind the researchers working to change the future of brain cancer.
Learn more about brain tumours or explore all of our funded research projects.
The Brain Foundation is dedicated to funding the next generation of Australian research into brain disorders, diseases, and injuries, with the ultimate goal of advancing diagnoses, treatments, and patient outcomes.