The West Pennant Hills Cherrybrook Lions Club thanks members of the community for their generous support of the Club’s 2022 Cancer Research Raffle. All funds raised have been donated to The Sydney Children’s Hospital Foundation (SCHF) Cancer Research Unit (CRU) to assist with an important clinical trial to help child brain cancer patients.
At a recent dinner, the Club presented its donation of $16,650 to Melanie Russo, Marketing Manager for the SCHF. These funds will be used to purchase a Gravitational Brain Transducer, one of the project’s most important equipment needs, which is being built in London.
The clinical trial is being conducted by the Foundation’s CRU in conjunction with the London University to develop Magnetic Resonance Elastography (MRE), a non-invasive medical imaging process to generate a stiffness map of brain tissue in young patients following their cancer diagnosis and during treatments.
Westmead scientists are developing an exciting new model for growing “brain cells in a dish” and combining them with “mini tumours” of patient cells. This will enable a direct comparison of MRE maps of the brain in dish/mini, tumour models with patient data to allow fine-tuning of the laboratory model to produce a nearto- exact replica of the brain for testing new therapies.
Once the transducer is installed in the research MRI and, subsequent to obtaining ethics approval, the researchers will perform a pilot study on an initial cohort of 10 patients. This trial will represent an exciting advance on previous diagnostic methods.
The West Pennant Hills Cherrybrook Club has been helping the Foundation’s CRU for over 20 years and during this time has seen major improvements in both treatments and cure rates. The club continues to value community support to help the Foundation’s research team give hope to young cancer patients.
The club invites members of the community that would like to learn more about helping to fight the scourge of child cancer, to contact Philip Watson [email protected] or visit the Club’s website at wphclionsclub.org.au
– GEOFF IRVINE, CLUB PUBLICITY OFFICER
