Our research projects

Dr Laura Donovan is testing a targeted treatment for medulloblastoma in the hopes of giving incurable patients new treatment options.

Dr Timothy Ritzmann aims to improve ependymoma care and treatment by harnessing the potential of extracellular vesicles.

Diffuse midline glioma is a devastating brain tumour, affecting primarily young children. There’s currently no cure for this disease and treatment options are limited. This is mainly because this type of tumour is well-protected from drugs by the ‘blood-brain barrier’. This barrier physically blocks all medications from entering the brain. Our group has developed new methods of bypassing this barrier using focused ultrasound.

Looking at how brain tumours hijack immune cells, forcing them to support cancer growth instead of fighting it.

Looking at the differences between healthy brain cells before and after treatment to uncover the mechanisms behind brain-related late effects.

Ependymoma comes back after treatment around half of the time, because some cancer cells are still alive. If doctors could identify these cells and diagnose relapsed ependymoma sooner, children could start treatment earlier.

Creating a new immunotherapy that will attacks collagen in cancer cells, and testing whether it is effective in model systems to make it the best it can be.

Looking at how medulloblastoma brain tumours use an amino acid, and whether blocking access to that resource would make cancer cells more susceptible to treatment.

Testing whether treatment could be safely reduced for children with germinoma brain tumours