What we do
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Fund for Brain Tumour Research
Heads Up symbolizes hope and resilience, supporting research
like dose painting and motility trapping — innovative techniques
aimed at improving the treatment of brain tumours in children and adults.
Dose Painting
Key projects supported by Heads Up focus on innovative techniques to improve treatments. One such breakthrough is a clinical trial with dose painting, which delivers higher, targeted radiation doses to the most active areas of a tumour, guided by the FET signal on PET scans.
The biological heterogeneity of tumours can be visualised using molecular imaging techniques such as positron emission tomography (PET). This technique enables to identify parts within the tumour with the highest degree of malignancy and/or highest radiation resistance using specific PET tracers, like fluoro-ethyl-tyrosine (FET).
Dose painting is a technique in radiation oncology that considers the molecular and biological tumour heterogeneity and redistributes the total prescribed irradiation dose within the tumour according to the biological differences determined with PET imaging. In areas of higher PET-activity, a higher dose is planned, while areas of the tumour with intermediate or low signal are irradiated with the standard dose.The underlying hypothesis is that a higher dose to these more active areas will result in an increased chance of cell kill and finally better tumour control.
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Tom Boterberg
Radiation oncologist,
Ghent University Hospital
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Motility Trapping
Another promising area of research is motility trapping, which aims to halt the movement of invasive cancer cells. By effectively immobilizing these cells, this technique seeks to prevent the tumour from spreading further, offering new possibilities for containment and treatment.
High grade glioma (HGG) is the most frequent primary brain tumour, affecting both adults and children. To date, no curative treatment exists and eventually tumour progression inevitably occurs, leading to devastating symptoms and death. Tumour cell motility is an important, yet too little investigated factor in therapy failure.
Glioma cells migrate outside the visible tumour margins, sometimes even to distant locations within the brain. These tumoural cells follow concentration gradients of specific chemical substances or ‘chemoattractants’.
Migratory glioma cells ‘shelter’ within normal functional tissue, were they cannot be targeted by local therapy (surgery or radiotherapy). To kill these migrated cells, we have to rely on chemotherapy. However, this is hindered by the blood-brain barrier and is associated with serious side-effects.
Motility trapping aims to target the migratory glioma cells and consist of two consecutive phases:
In phase 1, a tumour trap is placed in the resection cavity aftertumor surgery. This trap delivers chemoattractants to mislead glioma cells, that shelter in normal brain, back to the original tumour location.
In phase 2, these attracted tumour cells, no longer sheltered by normal functional brain, are targeted with local therapy (second surgery and/or radiotherapy).
In summary, tumour cells are attracted to be killed.
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Jelle Vandersteene
Harry Pinson
Neurosurgeons,
Ghent University Hospital
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