Reaching across borders

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Brain Tumour Support NZ chair, Mandy Bathan, and trustee, Chris Tse, attended the Fourth World Summit of Brain Tumour Patient Advocates in the USA. The meeting was held at the Center for Cancer Research of the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) campus in Bethesda, Maryland. It was organised by the International Brain Tumour Alliance, where Chris is a senior advisor.

The Center for Cancer Research at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) is the largest cancer research facility in the world. Mandy and Chris were privileged to meet and attended presentations from some of the top clinicians and scientists involved in brain tumour treatment and research in the US. The Center undertakes research activities from pre-clinical stage through to late stage clinical trials. A highlight of the visit was a tour of the research laboratories where they viewed cutting edge projects with NIH researchers.

“New Zealand is a small country and brain tumours are one of the less common cancers,” Chris remarked. “It’s imperative that we keep pace with what is happening in the rest of the world so that New Zealand brain tumour patients can continue to receive the best treatments and standards of care,” he said.

Brain Tumour Support NZ is now able to connect New Zealand brain tumour patients to the NCI-CONNECT programme for certain types of rare brain tumours.

Another highlight was meeting and spending time with the leaders of so many brain tumour patients organisations from around the world. “The opportunity to compare experiences and swap notes with patient advocates from other countries was absolutely vital,” Mandy said. “As a relatively new charity we were able to learn so much from others who had walked the same path that we are now traveling,” she said.

As a result of making these connections, Brain Tumour Support NZ is now in regular contact with leading brain tumour patient advocates from Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, India and Japan. This international network has already helped one local patient with a rare tumour sub-type to connect with fellow patients overseas, after they were unable to find any other New Zealand patients with their condition.

Mandy and Chris’s travel and accommodation expenses for their trip to the US were funded courtesy of a grant from the International Brain Tumour Alliance.