Brain cancer remains one of the toughest diseases to treat. Tackling it requires new approaches and national collaboration – and that’s exactly what drives Niclas Skarne, who recently joined the Brain Cancer Australia team.
As the Project Coordinator of the Biobanking and Organoid Platform, Niclas is shining a light on the role of biobanking and organoid development in advancing brain cancer research.
"Organoids are 3D lab-grown models of brain tumours made directly from the patient’s resected tumour tissue. They have the potential to transform brain cancer care through personalised medicine.”
Niclas believes that organoids will help to pre-screen patients and identify which treatments they are most likely to respond to which in turn can dramatically improve the success rate of clinical trials.
Niclas is also overseeing the biobanking platform—a national network of 20 biobanks holding over 11,000 patient samples of tumour tissue and associated data that can be accessed by researchers globally.
Key to effective biobanking and organoid development is standardisation and ensuring that all research sites follow the same rigorous protocols. Right now, different labs use different methods, which makes it difficult to compare data.
"We’re implementing a standardised approach, so that every participating research site across Australia is working as part of a unified team. This increases the quality of research, improves collaboration, and accelerates progress towards new treatments – which are desperately needed in brain cancer.”
Having lost both grandfathers to cancer at a young age, Niclas never forgot the level of suffering they endured. “For a while I wanted to be a pilot or a deep-sea captain - but, to be honest, it was never really a competition. It was always going to be science and cancer.”
After growing up in the Canary Islands, Niclas pursued a degree in biochemistry at the University of Edinburgh. He then completed a Master of Research in Cancer at University College London, followed by a PhD at Brisbane’s QIMR Berghofer Medical Institute, where he focused on developing organoid models to identify new therapies for brain cancer. He remains based at QIMR Berghofer Medical Institute.
"Brain cancer is one of the most challenging and deadly diseases. The standard treatments barely extend survival, and nothing significant has changed in decades. That’s why we have to think outside the box, take innovative approaches, and collaborate as a team across the country."
