Dr Charlie Teo has dedicated his time to collecting samples for over 10 years making this resource one of the largest and most varied to study brain cancer. Now in an Australian-first, the Charlie Teo Foundation Brain Tumour Bank will extract DNA from samples and analyse and map their genetic code making this data available for researchers to use. That data essentially creates a virtual copy of the sample, meaning a single sample can now be used in multiple brain cancer studies at the same time!

Charlie Teo Foundation Brain Tumour Bank will take precision medicine – the knowledge of an individual’s genetic code – to the next level. This will form the foundation for researchers to begin to understand how an individuals’ genetic code interacts and behaves with various factors that results in their brain cancer. Understanding this may lead to targeted treatments that will make a significant difference to an individual beating brain cancer.

Charlie Teo Foundation Brain Tumour Bank

Charlie Teo Foundation Brain Tumour Bank is a safe house for samples of human tissue, live cells, DNA and blood to be used for brain cancer research. It will help researchers understand what is unique and different about each individual’s brain cancer and contribute to expanding knowledge on diagnosis, prognosis and treatment.

The Brain Tumour Bank is unique because not only will it collect tissue and blood samples, as routinely collected by Australian brain biobanks, but will determine the precise sequence of every nitrogenous base pair that makes up the genetic code of the patients who have donated their samples. This provides a highly comprehensive, cost-effective, time-saving and invaluable resource for researchers to use to help advance our research of brain cancer.

Charlie Teo Foundation Brain Tumour Bank will also be unique in establishing a cell line repository of real-world brain tumours, which could be utilised in future to learn more about the behaviours of these tumours. Successful development of these cell lines will provide valuable and accurate models that will enable more refined analysis of the mechanisms that regulate individual patient response to treatment and allow the development of models for precision medicine.

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.

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

Publication

Charlie Teo Foundation Brain Tumour Bank is a NSW Health Pathology certified biobank. We published in the Open Journal of BioResources to be open and transparent about our biobanking processes including consenting and material handling procedures, quality assurance measures and processes for accessing materials.

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.