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Research by Australian scientists could pave the way to a new treatment for a currently incurable brain cancer in children called Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma, or DIPG. Affecting about 20 children in Australia each year, DIPG is a devastating disease with an average survival time of just nine months after diagnosis.
The research, led by scientists at Children s Cancer Institute and published this week in the international journal,
Cell Reports, offers an exciting new therapeutic approach for the treatment of DIPG by using a new anti-cancer drug.
The new drug, CBL0137, is an anti-cancer compound developed from the antimalarial drug quinacrine. The researchers found that CBL0137 directly reverses the effects of the key genetic drivers in DIPG, and has a profound effect against DIPG tumour models. They also foundCBL0137 is even more effective when combined with a second drug, panobinostat, a new type of drug known as a histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor. When used