"When you get the fundamentals right, you give researchers and clinicians the resources they need to improve care and deliver more brain cancer breakthroughs — faster."
Professor Lindy Jeffree
Brain Cancer Australia at the 2025 Andrew Olle Media Lecture
Read the full speeches from Professor Lindy Jeffree and Robyn Leonard OAM, delivered at the 2025 Andrew Olle Media Lecture, where they shared personal stories and a vision for faster brain cancer breakthroughs.
Professor Lindy Jeffree
Professor Jeffree is Chair of the Brain Cancer Australia National Consortium — a nationwide consortium of more than 90 of the country’s top brain cancer clinicians and researchers.
She is also Director of Neurosurgery at the Alfred Hospital and Professor in the Department of Surgery at Monash University, Melbourne.
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Exactly 30 years ago, the ABC lost one of its finest to brain cancer — journalist Andrew Olle. It was a shocking loss then, and it’s still a tragic reminder of how little progress we’ve made since.
As a neurosurgeon, I’ve spent decades treating people with brain cancer. These are high stakes interactions, so the patients stay in your memory.
I’d like to tell you about one of them.
Let’s call him David. He was in his mid-forties, a tradie, married with children in late primary school. Which is pretty typical. Brain cancer affects people of all ages, becoming common in middle age.
David presented with a seizure, which meant he immediately could not drive and could not work.
I operated, trying to take out as much tumour as possible, but there is always some left. He had a high-grade glioma, like Andrew Olle, and we offered him radiation and chemotherapy.
Knowing that the therapy postpones the inevitable, but does not change the outcome, David chose not to have further treatment. He did not want his children to remember him as someone who was sick.
The family tried to continue making life as normal as possible. David spent all the time he could with the kids. Every now and then, he would say to his wife something like “I’d better teach you how to change the fuses”.
The last time I saw his wife, David was too sick to make the trip to hospital. They’d had to sell the car because of the financial challenges. His wife was planning to take the kids away for Christmas. They all knew Dad would not be around by then and they wanted to get out of the empty house.
Those children will be adults now. I wonder how they coped without their father, and I think of him every time I change a fuse.
I came to neurosurgery because I wanted to make a difference to people, and because there’s nothing cooler than operating on a human brain.
For a long time, I believed that it was enough to treat patients like David and to teach the next generation of neurosurgeons.
But it isn’t.
That’s why I joined Brain Cancer Australia’s National Consortium. That’s why I’m standing here tonight — out of scrubs and under a different sort of bright lights.
Right now, there are patients in Australia who aren’t receiving best-practice surgical or post-operative treatment.
There are researchers trying to do vital work — but unable to access high-quality, comparable samples that will fast-track their research.
There are patients with no way of finding clinical trials, and clinicians who don’t know where to direct them. Too many people miss out on the chance to contribute to — or benefit from — research.
And when it comes to trials, we lack the infrastructure to run cost-effective, data-driven studies.
This is a national problem — brain cancer kills more children and adults under 40 than any other cancer. And in 40 years, we’ve seen almost no change in survival – and it needs a national solution.
There’s someone in this room who’s shown us what’s possible.
Professor Richard Scolyer is a world-leading pathologist – he’s also an inspiration to all of us.
He and his team transformed outcomes in melanoma.
As Richard has told us:
“It changed in melanoma because they built the right infrastructure — systems to enrol patients in trials, collect specimens, and generate data — and because they had the philanthropic support to make it happen.”
Richard, we’re so honoured to have you here tonight — you have shown us what’s possible through vision, expertise, and collective effort. And I know everyone here will join me in acknowledging your contribution.
What worked in melanoma can work in brain cancer.
Brain Cancer Australia is building three national infrastructure platforms designed to deliver that same kind of progress.
It’s not very sexy, but it’s the kind of work that changes everything.
Because when you get the fundamentals right, you give researchers and clinicians the resources they need to improve care and deliver more brain cancer breakthroughs — faster.
We have the plan.
Now we need the support to deliver it. If we don’t, this disease will keep taking the lives of people like Andrew Olle and like David.
But if we do then the story of brain cancer in this country can change.
You can give future patients a chance at survival.
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Robyn Leonard OAM
Robyn is the Founder and Director of Brain Cancer Australia.
Robyn was an inaugural member of the Australian Brain Cancer Mission Strategic Advisory Group, and in 2023 was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for her service to community health and medical research
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Thank you to the ABC and the Olle family for keeping brain cancer in the spotlight for all these years.
I would also like to thank Professor Scolyer for joining us tonight and to acknowledge our charity chair and my long-time supporter Professor Michael Besser. Thank you, Michael.
Someone once told me there’s no hope when it comes to brain cancer but I disagree.
Hope is what I held onto when my daughter Lucie was first diagnosed. When the treatments failed. When the tumour came back.
And after she died in 2012, I turned that hope toward research, collaboration, and systems change I established Brain Cancer Australia because business as usual wasn’t working.
We’ve built the national consortium, the partnerships and now we’re building the infrastructure.
So tonight, I turn my hope to you. We know what needs to be done. With your support we can deliver it and change the future for people diagnosed with brain cancer.
Lucie is the reason I started this mission and she’s the reason I’ll keep going until we’ve built the research infrastructure the entire Australian brain cancer community needs.
I’d like to end tonight with a video of Lucie that we shared at the Olles a few years ago. I’m sharing it again because the message remains as important now as it was then - we need progress and we need it faster.
And yes, if Lucie was here tonight, she’d roll her eyes and say “OMG Mum, please don’t show that video again.”
But because she’s not here to stop me and because she always liked to have the last word, I’ll leave you with Lucie.
Thank you.
Donate here to support this vital work: https://www.braincanceraustralia.org.au/donate.
