"When you bring everyone together — clinicians, researchers, biobanks, consumer advocates — that’s when you start to see real change.”
Dr Rebecca Ormsby
Dr Rebecca Ormsby on the crucial link between the clinic and the lab.
When Dr Rebecca Ormsby is processing a brain tumour sample, there’s one moment that always makes her pause.
“It’s when I see the date of birth and notice how young the patient is,” she says. “My heart sinks because I think about the life they should still have ahead of them. The prognosis for brain cancer is just so devastating."
As the manager of the South Australian Neurological Tumour Bank at Flinders University and a member of Brain Cancer Australia’s National Consortium Steering Committee, Rebecca is focused on improving brain cancer survival rates — and on building the research infrastructure that makes that progress possible
Biobanks like Rebecca’s play a vital role in connecting patients, clinicians and researchers — ensuring that tumour samples are collected, preserved and made available to support research.
“The SANTB has changed the landscape in brain cancer research,” Rebecca says. “Instead of individual projects trying to collect their own samples, we’ve created something that can support many projects — more efficiently, and at higher quality.”
Despite their importance, biobanks are often underfunded and under-recognised.
“People like to fund research projects, but without infrastructure like biobanks, those projects can’t happen. Biobanks are absolutely critical. They enable the kind of translational research that leads to new treatments.”
As a member of Brain Cancer Australia’s National Consortium Steering Committee, Rebecca sees collaboration as key to making progress.
“Individually, it can feel like you’re not making much progress. But when you bring everyone together — clinicians, researchers, biobanks, consumer advocates — that’s when you start to see real change.”
Read more: https://www.braincanceraustralia.org.au/our-impact/rebecca-ormsby
