Charlie’s Letters « Charlie Teo Foundation

It takes a collective force to make an impact

Charlie Teo Foundation is proud to share with you our latest video and letter from our founder showcasing the impact of our research.

In our first 4 years, the Charlie Teo Foundation has committed over $9 million to game-changing brain cancer research. We have connected disruptive brain cancer thinkers across the globe, encouraging collaborations and the sharing of new ideas.

With your support, we continue to forge ahead. Please make your tax-deductible donation by 30 June to keep this momentum going and allow us to fund more research. Together we can truly make an impact!

2nd June 2022

Hello Friends,

I am at the coal face. It’s very easy for me to be passionate about a disease where I see beautiful people dying every day.

But what I know more than ever is that the answers to brain cancer aren’t going to be found alone. It will take a collective force to make an impact.

2nd June 2022

Hello Friends,

I am at the coal face. It’s very easy for me to be passionate about a disease where I see beautiful people dying every day.

But what I know more than ever is that the answers to brain cancer aren’t going to be found alone. It will take a collective force to make an impact.

Recently I was in Bogotá, Colombia at the 17th World Congress of Neurosurgery. It was incredibly inspiring and stimulating to have 1,600 neurosurgeons and scientists gather from about 85 countries to learn from each other and rekindle connections. I was asked to give several talks each day, and felt reassured from other experts that the projects the Charlie Teo Foundation is funding are unique and promising.

I continue to operate overseas on the world’s most difficult tumours and have been welcomed and celebrated by every country visited. I have recently been Visiting Professor to Johns Hopkins University, Cedars-Sinai Hospital and the Mayo Clinic. I have been doing pro bono work in Africa, Asia and India and lecturing, teaching and advising on almost every continent.

I am also proud and honoured to have just been made an Honorary Member of the Spanish Neurosurgical Society for my development and dissemination of minimally invasive techniques in neurosurgery, contribution to neurosurgical education in developing countries and promotion of research into brain cancer.

Research Symposium

Charlie Teo Foundation held our first ever Brain Cancer Research Symposium in March 2022.

Every scientist funded by the Charlie Teo Foundation had the opportunity to present their projects, and patients and families shared their heart-breaking stories. As a testament to how engaged and dedicated they were, not a single person exited the virtual meeting until its completion.

The presentations were exciting, innovative, scientifically robust, novel and readily translatable to the bedside. The scientists were equally passionate about their projects as they were to share ideas and collaborate with each other.

The symposium gave me an incredibly positive feeling about the worth of the Charlie Teo Foundation. Everything that I had set out to achieve, I felt was coming to fruition… and at a much more accelerated rate than I ever imagined! It honestly made me as proud as the day my first child was born.

The goals of Charlie Teo Foundation were to be disruptive, transparent, fiscally lean and tenacious in our pursuit of finding treatments for Australian patients specifically, and all brain tumour patients.

I felt incredibly emotional and confident listening to all these disruptive thinkers and urge you to watch the highlight video of our symposium at the top of my letter. I know that the Charlie Teo Foundation is carrying out on exactly what we set out to achieve when we opened our doors 4 years ago.

View the Symposium program

The answers to brain cancer aren’t going to be found alone

Grant Announcements

We proactively seek out who we consider to be the best brains from around the globe to study brain cancer for the benefit of Australian patients. Let me introduce you to our newest researchers:

Profs David Cormode and Jay Dorsey – Treating GBM in a FLASH

We have awarded a grant of $295k to Profs Cormode and Dorsey of the University of Pennsylvania to investigate an emerging technique called FLASH Radiotherapy (FLASH-RT) in combination with a drug-loaded gel (called a hydrogel) to treat and kill GBM tumours.

This treatment approach works by first injecting the hydrogel into the cavity where the GBM tumour was surgically removed and then treating with a rapid, high-dose radiotherapy technique called FLASH-RT. Using this approach means the treatment time is dramatically shortened, whilst also minimising damage to the healthy surrounding brain. FLASH-RT also triggers the release of the GBM-killing drug contained within the hydrogel. This project hopes to show that this two-pronged attack will kill the residual cancer cells that could not be surgically removed and will prevent the cancer from coming back.

Prof Craig Horbinski – Diagnosing childhood brain cancer using a simple blood test

At our research symposium, a mother shared her daughter’s brain cancer journey and raised the urgent need to improve early diagnosis of childhood brain cancer. Our foundation immediately sought out researchers leading the charge in the diagnostics space to tackle this critical community need.

In our search, we identified Prof Craig Horbinski at Northwestern University as a pioneer. He is currently evaluating a blood test to diagnose brain cancer in adults. We have awarded Prof Hosbinski $276k to now set his sights on developing a similar test for children. This test works by pulling out DNA floating in blood and analysing DNA patterns. It is hoped this technique will identify cancer type and allow for early diagnosis of childhood brain cancer, all from a simple blood test.

We are bringing together the best brains to beat brain cancer

This tax-time I want you to think of people with brain cancer. They are thrust totally out of their comfort zone, facing the biggest challenge of their life.

I’d like you to support our Challenge 4 Brain Cancer and make your tax-deductible donation today. Typically, I push myself to the edge – radical brain surgery, riding a motorbike, never giving up fighting for people with brain cancer and what I believe in. Put simply, I never stop. This is why I am taking the personal challenge to pause, and take some time each day to appreciate the beauty of life. To get outside every day, walk the dogs and get back to nature. And to do these things all while continuing my hard work in brain cancer.

Join me in taking the challenge, or make your tax-deductible donation this June. The funds raised this year will go directly to fund more rebellious scientists thinking outside the box.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your ongoing support.

Charlie

Dr Charlie Teo AM
Founder

Stimulating new thinking

Charlie Teo Foundation is proud to announce over $2.3 million in new brain cancer research grants! We fund radical research backed by strong scientific merit. We believe that new thinking is critical to finally uncovering the key to curing brain cancer.

We are excited to share our research progress and future plans with you in the latest letter from our founder, Dr Charlie Teo.

8th December 2021

Hello friends,

Sabbatical leave was designed to stimulate new thinking in academics who typically became set in their ways when confined to the same intellectual environment for years.

I am happy to say that the concept works.

The last 3 months have been incredibly stimulating, refreshing, intellectually challenging and revitalising. I have met with, lectured to and learnt from neurosurgeons and neuro-scientists across the globe.

Starting in Germany in August followed by Italy, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Spain, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, I have given 35 presentations in Europe, 56 in North America and met with over 860 surgeons and scientists from some of the most prestigious institutions in the world.

From Europe I travelled to Canada for 2 weeks where I continued my academic tour visiting famous centres such as McGill University and the University of Toronto. In the USA I have been in deep discussions with brain cancer scientists in New York, Houston, Austin and Miami. I taught a cadaver course at Henry Ford School of Medicine, followed by New Orleans to teach a seminar on keyhole neurosurgery.

I spent the last month in India, learning and teaching where I encountered novel projects being pursued in a country that is typified by industrious and innovative thinkers.

We scour the world for industrious and innovative thinkers who aren’t afraid to break the mould.

Progress and Publications

Brain cancer is an intelligent cancer. It teaches itself how to beat therapies and develop resistance. It builds its scaffolding – it has its own blood supply and self-supplies with oxygen and nutrients. Put all this together and this is why it’s been so hard to beat brain cancer. But there absolutely is hope. It will take some time, and we have seen some recent progress that can improve survival but only by a matter of months.

We must hold hope that by taking our focused and radical approach to research funding, of all the different types of therapies we’re pursuing, one of them will eventually come out as a definitive, good treatment for brain cancer.

Here’s a snapshot of some recent progress and publications of Charlie Teo Foundation funded projects.

GBM-on-a-Chip

Dr Chou was one of our very first ‘Teo Research Rebels’. With our funding, he has successfully built the world’s very first, fully functional brain tumour on a microchip. This ‘chip’ consists of multiple layers including a blood brain barrier, blood vessels and a 3D printed brain tumour. This has never been done before. Dr Chou’s work was recently published in Advanced Therapeutics – you can read it below.

Dr Chou’s team built Australia’s first-ever microgravity device for looking at cancer cells. They have already shown that under microgravity, the most aggressive type of brain cancer is disrupted. The brain cancer is unable to form and stops growing.

As he moves into the second year of his grant, Dr Chou also discovered how to ‘open’ the blood brain barrier, to allow more drugs to get through to treat the brain cancer. The experiment his team are working on now is how to properly control and time this. I’ll keep you updated of Dr Chou’s progress.

Citation: Silvani G, Basirun C, Wu H, Mehner C, Poole K, Bradbury P, Chou J. A 3D-Bioprinted Vascularized Glioblastoma-on-a-Chip for Studying the Impact of Simulated Microgravity as a Novel Pre-Clinical Approach in Brain Tumor Therapy. Advanced Therapeutics.2021;2100106.

Charlie Teo Foundation Brain Tumour Bank

The Open Journal of BioResources recently published about the Charlie Teo Foundation Brain Tumour Bank (CTF biobank). It is a NSW Health Pathology certified biobank. We established the CTF biobank to produce and share high-quality, well-annotated, biological and clinical data that has the potential to drive further innovation and scientific breakthroughs.

With my patients’ consent, we have collected samples of human tissue, live cells, DNA and blood. Researchers can apply to use the valuable specimens and data to be used for brain cancer research. I was doing this for 10 years – so the CTF biobank is an incredibly important data resource!

We are open and transparent about our biobank processes in the paper

including consenting and material handling procedures, quality assurance measures and processes for accessing materials.

Citation: Caixeiro, N.J., Po, J.W., Zaman, A., Sughrue, M.E. and Teo, C., 2021. Charlie Teo Foundation Brain Tumour Bank. Open Journal of Bioresources, 8, p.3.

Single-cell RNA Sequencing

At our first ever Rebel Ball in 2019, I officially announced the brain cancer collaboration between the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and the Charlie Teo Foundation. We brought together two teams with unique genomics expertise and data resources to tackle brain cancer.

The collaboration is led by Prof Joseph Powell, Director of the Garvan-Weizmann Centre for Cellular Genomics. Our aim was to generate high-quality data from my patients with high-grade brain tumours, collected from the CTF biobank. I am pleased to report that we succeeded!

Led by Joseph, the team generated single-cell (RNA and DNA) sequencing and spatial transcriptomics on over 100 brain cancer tissue samples. This is now fast and possible with advancements in technology. Bioinformatics experts

analysed the data to detect patterns and trends. What they found means we can now predict how cell states transform into lethal brain cancer cells.

And this is just the beginning…

Progress and Publications

Here’s a snapshot of some recent progress and publications of Charlie Teo Foundation funded projects.

GBM-on-a-Chip

Charlie Teo Foundation Brain Tumour Bank

With my patients’ consent, we have collected samples of human tissue, live cells, DNA and blood. Researchers can apply to use the valuable specimens and data to be used for brain cancer research. I was doing this for 10 years – so the CTF biobank is an incredibly important data resource!

We are open and transparent about our biobank processes in the paper including consenting and material handling procedures, quality assurance measures and processes for accessing materials.

Citation: Caixeiro, N.J., Po, J.W., Zaman, A., Sughrue, M.E. and Teo, C., 2021. Charlie Teo Foundation Brain Tumour Bank. Open Journal of Bioresources, 8, p.3.

Single-cell RNA Sequencing

Led by Joseph, the team generated single-cell (RNA and DNA) sequencing and spatial transcriptomics on over 100 brain cancer tissue samples.

This is now fast and possible with advancements in technology. Bioinformatics experts analysed the data to detect patterns and trends. What they found means we can now predict how cell states transform into lethal brain cancer cells.

And this is just the beginning…

We fund radical research backed by strong scientific merit.

Grant Announcements

Charlie Teo Foundation funds radical research backed by strong scientific merit. We take a focused, disciplined and proactive approach to funding research. We scour the world for industrious and innovative thinkers who aren’t afraid to break the mould. We fund within key research themes of More Data, Better Tools and our Teo Research Rebels.

I believe this approach will drive us towards to achieving our ultimate goal – to beat brain cancer.

I am excited to officially announce that in the last 6 months since I last wrote to you, Charlie Teo Foundation has awarded 6 new brain cancer research grants totalling over AU $2.3 million. Let me introduce you to our newest grant recipients:

More Data

Prof Joseph Powell – Down to the single cell

Prof Powell will now use the data and bioinformatics insights gained under our collaboration to date, to find treatment targets for brain cancer patients.

His team will analyse further brain cancer tissue samples from the CTF biobank, then fine tune the machine learning algorithms. Using real-world patient characteristics, the team will be looking for any critical treatment opportunities. We have awarded a further grant of $897k for this exciting work.

Better Tools

Dr Jessica Buck – New ways to treat kids

Dr Buck is an early career childhood brain cancer researcher, one of Australia’s Superstars of STEM in 2021 and a proud Kamilaroi woman. She is the first Aboriginal woman to graduate with a doctorate from Oxford University.

Dr Buck is a fellow at the Telethon Kids Institute in Perth and her focus is on finding more effective, less harmful treatments for children with brain cancer. We awarded Dr Buck a grant of $199k to develop new laboratory techniques to determine which immunotherapy drugs are most effective in childhood cancers. Dr Buck’s work will aim to fast-track immunotherapy drugs into the clinic.

Prof Amy Heimberger – Brain cancer takes the STING

Immunotherapy has really been giving us hope with many other cancers but not so much in brain cancer. The body cannot detect the brain tumour, making it ‘invisible’ to the immune system. We have awarded a grant of $499k to Prof Heimberger of Northwestern University to investigate the effectiveness of a new drug called STING (stimulator of interferon genes) that will kickstart an immune response.

The aim is to turn non-responsive tumours – known as ‘cold tumours’ – into a ‘hot’ tumour that the body can now see to attack the cancer. Prof Heimberger is also a life-long dog lover and has already helped to treat dogs suffering from brain cancer with this new treatment approach.

Prof Michael Keidar – A new wave to treat GBM

We have awarded $374k to Prof Keidar at George Washington University to build a new kind of helmet device to treat GBM patients. You might remember me talking about a helmet device in our Ask Charlie series as a promising advancement in GBM treatments in recent years. However, the existing FDA-approved treatment can be invasive for patients – the helmet may be worn for up to 22 hours per day, requires regular head shaving and can cause skin irritation and disturb sleep.

Prof Keidar plans to use his 25 years’ experience in plasma-based nanotechnology, cold plasma physics and applications in biotechnology to make significant improvements to the existing treatment.

So how will it work? Like pores of the skin, cells have pores too. Using high frequency electromagnetic waves that emit from the helmet, Prof Keidar aims to open the ‘pores’ of the brain cancer cells only, making them more responsive to chemotherapy, and leaving the healthy cells intact. His helmet device only needs to be worn for a short time by patients, making it much less invasive than the existing FDA-approved method. We desperately need better treatments like this for GBM!

Teo Research Rebels

Dr Guillermo Gomez – A novel combination of AI and invention

We have awarded a grant of $200k to Dr Gomez, an Argentinian cancer cell biologist with a laboratory at the University of South Australia. He’s harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse vast volumes of brain tumour images. Dr Gomez is bringing this powerhouse of data together with a tool he helped to invent for growing 3D brain tumours, known as an organoid.

With this novel combination, he strives to find new GBM treatments. Dr Gomez is definitely thinking outside the box here!

Prof Johanna Joyce – Real-time live imaging

Prof Joyce started her own laboratory in 2005 in New York, USA. She is someone who always likes to go against convention in her research, which is what makes her a ‘rebel’. Her lab, now at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, has recently developed a unique technology to live image brain cancer in preclinical models in real-time.

We have awarded a grant of $200k for the team to literally look directly inside the tumour itself to study how brain cancer develops and is altered by exposure to different treatments over time. This is exciting progress, and the strategy is a first in the cancer field.

Charlie Teo Foundation plans to far outlive me, and not cease until it has achieved our shared goal – to beat brain cancer.

I want to give you my assurance that I will never give up the fight against brain cancer until the day I die. Charlie Teo Foundation has a strategy in place and plans to carry out its work funding brain cancer research for years into the future. Whilst I would love to see a cure for brain cancer in my lifetime, and I am hopeful that progress WILL occur in my lifetime, I concede that I may not be living on this Earth to see a cure. Charlie Teo Foundation plans to far outlive me, and not cease until it has achieved our shared goal – to beat brain cancer.

Lots of love to you all, have a wonderful festive season, think of and give to those less fortunate at this time, and by doing so, you’ll enjoy your down time, your families and your blessings so much more.

Finally, I invite you to make a donation to the Charlie Teo Foundation this festive season. Bianca is someone less fortunate, diagnosed with brain cancer in October 2020 at the age of 45. She now has an average survival of just 15 months. Bianca is in the prime of her life. A mother to 5 beautiful children and a police officer. She has dedicated her life to serving her community, and it just isn’t acceptable or fair the fate that Bianca and so many others face.

So please, read Bianca’s Battle and consider making a donation to help fund brain cancer research so desperately needed to extend and save lives.

Charlie

Dr Charlie Teo AM
Founder

Let’s make sure Bianca and the many people that will follow are not just another statistic.

Donate today to fund radical research at the cutting-edge of scientific discoveries.

Thank you for your support!

When the exception becomes the rule

May is Brain Cancer Awareness Month. To all our brain cancer community, this month we honour you. We are in awe of the courage, strength and tenacity displayed by so many of you when facing a diagnosis with brain cancer.

At the Charlie Teo Foundation we continue to work hard to offer you hope. You are at the centre of our quest to find and fund brain cancer researchers who think outside the box. We are looking for the answers that you need to live a long life and fulfil all your dreams and life’s ambitions.

In his latest letter, Charlie shows you what potentially game-changing research we have been working on to finally uncover the answers needed to better treat this devastating disease.

5th May 2021

Hello friends,

When you turn on the TV and the news, invariably you see a story about death and disaster, particularly at the moment. It would be easy to get a sense of hopelessness and futility. Yet everyday people approach life with a sense of perseverance.

As a neurosurgeon, I’ve been fortunate enough to learn from my patients what it means to demonstrate that kind of perseverance, even when the odds are against you. People diagnosed with brain cancer are forced to face an unimaginable fate. Their lives are measured in months and weeks, and their hopes and dreams may never be achieved. Sometimes they are told to go home and make arrangements for end of life.

When you are staring down the barrel at death, suddenly your grip on life becomes a whole lot tighter. It is at this time that people display incredible courage, driven by the hope that they may be the exception to the rule.

When you are staring down the barrel at death, suddenly your grip on life becomes a whole lot tighter. It is at this time that people display incredible courage, driven by the hope that they may be the exception to the rule.

Emma (pictured) is the exception to the rule. I was delighted to recently receive this beautiful message from Emma, enclosed with a Christmas card that I had sent to Emma and her parents in December 1991, 30 years ago.

“Charlie, when I was 4 years old you operated on me and I thank you for removing the brain tumour I had then. It recurred when I was 12 years old & was removed after 2 more operations. I’m now healthy and married with 3 healthy children. After 3 operations and a few permanent side effects, I am so grateful that I am alive and I’m able to celebrate 21 years Brain Cancer free with my family.”

“Charlie, when I was 4 years old you operated on me and I thank you for removing the brain tumour I had then. It recurred when I was 12 years old & was removed after 2 more operations. I’m now healthy and married with 3 healthy children. After 3 operations and a few permanent side effects, I am so grateful that I am alive and I’m able to celebrate 21 years Brain Cancer free with my family.”

Charlie Teo Foundation focuses on research as we want to make the exception become the new rule. We want to make high-grade brain cancers survivable, so never again does a patient have to hear, ‘we can’t cure you, we can only buy you time’.

So how do you make the un-survivable, survivable? There are plenty of real-life examples of scientific discoveries where things we never thought possible, are now possible. They did it by going against the grain, by pushing boundaries, by rebuffing groupthink. This is what we are trying to achieve, and COVID-19 has not halted our efforts.

Grant Announcements

We proactively seek out who we consider to be the best brains from around the globe to study brain cancer for the benefit of Australian patients. Let me introduce you to our newest researchers:

Prof Eran Elinav – Could gut health be the key to brain cancer?

We’re exploring uncharted territory

We now know there is a link between the gut microbiome, aka your ‘gut health’, and the brain. What has been recently discovered is that the gut microbiome could actually be the cause of some other neurological conditions and cancers. I’ve always wondered whether this link extends to brain cancer, and so we’ve sought out an expert to study this for the first time!

Prof Elinav is a gastroenterologist and guru in gut health at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. He and his team were the first to show that the gut microbiome could not only trigger the neurogenerative disease, ALS, but also affect its severity. We have awarded $200,000 to find out if such a link exists to the cause, prevention, or even treatment of brain cancer. If a link is found, harnessing the microbes and their secreted products may lead to new biological therapies to prevent and treat brain cancers.

Prof Steve Kay – Blocking the biological clock of GBM stem cells

We’re going after the root of the problem

A Provost Professor of neurology, biomedical engineering and biological sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California in the U.S., Prof Kay is a pioneer in the study of circadian rhythms (body clocks) that regulate hundreds of activities, from sleep to digestion to body temperature. His team examined the biological clocks of glioblastoma (GBM) stem cells. These are the stubborn cancer cells which are currently impossible to eradicate even after surgery, chemo and radiation therapy. The team found the GBM stem cells are “on overdrive” making them stronger and more resistant to treatment and able to divide and multiply rapidly.

A small-molecule drug has already been developed by his team to target the proteins in the biological clock of the GBM stem cells to disrupt their activity and cause the cancer cells to die. We have awarded $273,000 to Prof Kay to further test and compare this new drug with the current standard of care. This is a really promising discovery and if successful, would become part of and improve standard of care for patients.

Program updates

Not only do we award research grants, but we run our own research program too.

Biobank

Charlie Teo Foundation Brain Tumour Bank (biobank) is the largest, certified, biobank of its kind in the southern hemisphere, collecting brain tumour samples from surgery and making them available for researchers to access and use in their research. By doing this, we’re making it possible for brain cancer to be studied faster giving hope to brain cancer patients.

Since it became operational, we have added brain cancers to the biobank to now house samples from over 600 patients. Below is a summary of the work of the biobank in the 2020 calendar year

Charlie Teo Foundation Brain Tumour Bank

2020 Impact

Brain cancer samples from 95 patients Collected by Charlie Teo Foundation

179 brain cancer samples Accessed by brain cancer researchers

4 brain cancer projects Supported by Charlie Teo Foundation

Charlie Teo Foundation Brain Tumour Bank

2020 Impact

Brain cancer samples from 95 patients

Collected by Charlie Teo

Foundation

179 brain cancer samples

Accessed by brain cancer

researchers

4 brain cancer projects

Supported by Charlie Teo

Foundation

Charlie Teo Foundation focuses on research as we want to make the exception become the new rule.

This Brain Cancer Awareness Month I want you to think of people with brain cancer. They are thrust totally out of their comfort zone, facing the biggest challenge of their life.

This May I am inviting you to join me in a personal challenge, and together we can tackle brain cancer head-on. I would like you to do something that displays a sense of spirit, focus or courage, just like I see in my patients. I have set myself the challenge to learn a new skill – something that inspires me creatively and is good for my brain health. I am learning to play the guitar!

Find out more about how to join me and take the challenge at the end of my letter. Together, with your support, we can see the exception become the rule.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Charlie

Dr Charlie Teo AM
Founder

P.S. Read more about our game-changing research strategy and grants. Review our latest financials.

Take the Challenge

Our future is our youth

The festive season is a time to celebrate with friends and family. It can also be a hard time, where we cherish the memory of loved ones lost.

This December, the Charlie Teo Foundation (CTF) will be sharing the stories of our children and young who have been taken from us too soon, and how we are working to change the future for patients with brain cancer and their families.

In his latest letter, Charlie takes a moment to remember those who have lost their lives to brain cancer and to show you how CTF is fighting for the future of our youth.

8th December 2020

Hello friends,

As 2020 draws to an end, I find myself looking ahead… I see a brighter future on the horizon for the world, and for everyone who has been touched by brain cancer. That future may not be immediate, but I have hope in humanity that we will get there.

What is our future? It is our children and our youth. They are the ones that hold the destiny of this earth and our species in their hands.

Nothing destroys our destiny more than the death of a child. It is a combination of the incongruity of a parent out-living their offspring, the innocence of a child, the injustice of a disease where the victim is blameless and the unfairness of taking someone before they get to experience all that life has to offer. As a neurosurgeon I sadly see this all too often. I never forget the loss of a child.

What is our future? It is our children and our youth. We fight for their future.

Harry (pictured) was a patient of mine many years ago, yet I recall his story almost on a daily basis. He died of a brainstem glioma at the tender age of 7. In his 7 short years he demonstrated amazing personality traits. Extreme compassion. Nurturing and kindness to his younger brothers. Phenomenal courage and maturity in his approach to his terminal disease. A positive attitude that was contagious to his family and carers.

I often ponder on how the world would have been a better place if Harry could have lived a full life. He may have been a motivational speaker, a respected leader or a diplomat. He may have found the cure for cancer or invented a sustainable energy source. How sad that we will never know the potential contribution that Harry may have made to our humanity.

Our children are our future. They are our hope. How then does a disease that kills more children in Australia than any other disease, receive very little funding from our Government? Brain cancer is ranked NUMBER 1 for its socio-economic impact on society because it not only kills children, but it is also the most common cause of cancer-related death in young adults (AIHW 2017). It knocks our young out of the workforce and society in the prime of their life.

When funds and resources are allocated to the right people and right projects, miracles can happen.

My soul is more ablaze than ever with fierce determination to change this. I am confident that CTF is on the right track to achieve change. When funds and resources are allocated to the right people and right projects, miracles can happen.

Despite the challenges of this year, COVID-19 has not halted our efforts. I am pleased to announce that over the last 6 months since I last wrote to you, we have awarded 3 new brain cancer research grants totalling over AU$800k to those we have found and consider to be the best brains from Australia and around the globe. Let me introduce you to our newest researchers:

Dr Y. Alan Wang - A new experimental drug

We’re bringing new treatments to the table

We’ve encouraged the collaboration of an Australian pharmaceutical research company, Pharmaxis, and a cancer biologist at one of the most prestigious comprehensive cancer centres in the U.S., MD Anderson, to test new experimental drug PXS-5505. The Pharmaxis drug has already received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for treating myelofibrosis, a type of blood cancer. The drug has the potential to treat brain cancer, by breaking down the tumour’s surrounding environment to enhance the effect of treatments. We have awarded the team $187,000 to conduct the experiments it needs to prove that the drug will facilitate the killing of brain cancer cells. This work will fast track PXS-5505 to potentially being tested in clinical trials of brain cancer patients.

A/Prof Jeff Holst - Starving brain cancer

We’re cutting off its energy supply

A biomedical scientist at the University of New South Wales, we have awarded $136,500 to Jeff to find a way to stop the growth of brain cancer by cutting off its energy supply. We will provide fresh brain tumour samples from the Charlie Teo Foundation Brain Tumour Bank for his team to look at starving cancer cells of the essential nutrients needed for their growth and survival. This research will build upon the work of our Cancer Genomics – The Next Level project as the metabolomics data collected on the energy sources feeding brain cancer cells will be integrated and matched with the genetic data, creating the ultimate roadmap for destroying brain cancer.

A/Prof Peter Fecci - Unshackling the immune system

We're sending in the troops

After decades of failures, scientists finally found effective ways of turning the immune system against cancers (known as immunotherapy) with spectacular results – except for in brain cancer. Peter, a neurosurgeon from Duke University in the U.S. is an expert on T-cells. These T-cells are part of our immune system that locate and eliminate potential threats to keep you healthy. The problem with brain cancer is that the T-cells are often trapped in the bone marrow. Peter was one of the first to identify this T-cell dysfunction in brain cancer. Working alongside 2012 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, Prof Robert J. Lefkowitz, we have awarded the team $477,343 to find out how we can release the T-cells from the bone marrow so they can travel through the body to fight the brain cancer.

We also have some exciting new projects in the pipeline that I will announce in 2021.

Further, my pledge to you remains strong that we will stay lean and transparent. Our costs remain at under 20% of total income (which include both admin costs & fundraising costs) since we launched in 2018. To our loyal volunteers and companies that support us pro bono – you know who you are – I thank you wholeheartedly.

My soul is more ablaze than ever with fierce determination to change the future for people diagnosed with brain cancer.

This month we are sharing the stories of families who have felt the heart-breaking loss of a loved one to brain cancer. These stories demonstrate the tremendous courage that people show when facing diagnosis with a terminal disease.

Whether you have been personally affected by brain cancer or simply are shocked by the statistics, I invite you to join me. Read these stories. Share them with your friends. Stand up and act. Spread the word about brain cancer. Give by clicking the donate button below. Join me and do whatever you can to help us offer a future to people with brain cancer.

Thank you to all our supporters. Your continued generosity is a blessing and something we never take for granted. You believe in our approach to funding brain cancer research and I am humbled to carry the torch with you into the new year and beyond.

Let’s keep working together to ensure that our children just like Harry get to experience all that life has to offer.

Charlie

Dr Charlie Teo AM
Founder

P.S. Read more about our game-changing research strategy and grants. Review our latest financials.

Please Donate

How hope keeps us going

Today, in brain tumour awareness month, we take a moment to celebrate over 2 years of the Charlie Teo Foundation (CTF) with the release of Charlie’s letter.

On the 1st of March 2018, Charlie officially launched CTF to shake-up the way brain cancer research is funded. Charlie has never been satisfied with the status-quo. That’s why CTF is all about radical thinking to find a solution to brain cancer.

In this letter, Charlie reflects on the challenging times we face and how through this, CTF stands strong in our fight against brain cancer.

5th May 2020

Hello friends,

This week I operated on a courageous 29-year-old. She had a rapid recurrence of her brain cancer despite best standard treatment. Her devoted and loving husband held her hand throughout the pre-operative visit and gave nothing but unconditional support. Her eyes betrayed any outward pretence of bravado… she knew this would be her last chance of life. He knew it too.

All my patients are kind enough to show appropriate concern for the current pandemic. I am acutely aware, however, that deep within their souls I’m sure they are wondering why society appears to have forgotten their disease that carries an almost 100% mortality and for which governments contribute very little funding. I have pledged to stay the course, beat their drum, be their voice and relentlessly pursue funding opportunities by raising awareness and lobbying the government.

Death and dying are not unfamiliar to me. Although we are facing a global challenge never before witnessed, it is a reminder of how fragile life is, how important our health is, how home and family are paramount and how hope keeps us going.

My promise to you is that CTF will not lose sight of our purpose. We will continue to be transparent about our financials and disruptive in our approach to research.

“Although we are facing a global challenge never before witnessed, it is a reminder of how fragile life is, how important our health is, how home and family are paramount and how hope keeps us going.”

Of the $11 million raised for CTF over the last 2 years so far, we have committed $4 million to brain cancer research and our total costs are 19% of total income.

But we are not spending for the sake of spending. We measure our success on impact. CTF has a clear strategy that I really feel is going to move the needle. I want to finally see an improvement to brain cancer survival rates, something that hasn’t happened in over 35 years.

Let me introduce you to some of our newest impassioned, left-field and unconventional researchers and their grants that we are awarding in 2020.

Dr Joshua Chou – Out of this world!

We’re on a space mission

A biomedical engineer at the University of Technology Sydney, Joshua is the first in Australia to develop a microgravity device. Inspired by a chance encounter with Stephen Hawking who told him to “remember that nothing defies gravity”, Joshua has shown that altering gravitational forces causes cancer cells to stop growing. We’re funding him to study this in brain cancer. He’s also sending brain cancer cells into space to the International Space Station for 7 days to further study this phenomenon at ZERO GRAVITY.

A/Prof Hong Chen – Nasal drug delivery

We’re breaking down barriers

A biomedical engineer at Washington University in St Louis in the U.S, Hong is tackling a serious problem with treating brain cancer. The blood brain barrier protects the brain. It also makes it extremely difficult to get drugs through it to treat the cancer. She is using a novel approach to bypass the barrier and carry the drugs to release at the cancer site by combining three different techniques – nasal delivery – nanoparticles – focused ultrasound.

Dr Kristina Cook – The body clock

We’re giving the gift of time

I have always been fascinated with the circadian rhythm and how it impacts how we treat brain cancer. A cancer biologist, cancer survivor herself and up and comer brain cancer researcher at the University of Sydney, Kristina has worked with the 2019 Nobel Prize Winner in Medicine and is applying her learnings to brain cancer. She is our very first recipient of a Teo Research Rebels grant, exploring whether the body clock can be used to synchronise brain cancer cells to a time of day where they are most vulnerable to attack.

Dr Roel Verhaak – Saving kids & man’s best friend

We’re looking for the key driver

What drives brain cancer is currently unknown. Roel’s computational brain cancer biology team at the Jackson Laboratory in the U.S has helped to treat dogs diagnosed with brain cancer. What they discovered in trying to help sick dogs is that they develop brain cancer very similarly to brain cancer in children… So, we’re funding the lab to study those similarities to uncover the potential driver of childhood brain cancer.

And this is just a glimpse into our research. If you find it fascinating like me, you can find out more about our Research Projects.

All of these incredible researchers are thinking outside the box, and that’s exactly what I want to encourage. Let’s break-down silos! Let’s work together! Let’s share data, knowledge and experience!

“My plea with all our supporters is to approach brain cancer with determination, community spirit and a humanistic attitude.”

COVID-19 has underscored the importance of dealing with a serious illness as a community and with a humanistic approach, not individualistic. My plea with all our supporters is to take those very principles and continue to approach brain cancer with the same determination, community spirit and humanistic attitude.

I want to thank all those incredibly kind and generous people and organisations who have continued to donate to CTF despite hard financial times and to wish everyone all the very best for the year to come. You are offering hope to people with brain cancer, and that is a beautiful gift.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I would like to personally invite you to join me on Facebook Live this May to hear me talk more about how hope keeps us going and to have the opportunity to chat with me. Further details will be announced shortly.

Charlie

Dr Charlie Teo AM
Founder