Professor Bryan W. Day
(BSc Hons, PhD)
Professor Day is the Group Leader of the Sid Faithfull Brain Cancer Laboratory at QIMR Berghofer MRI and an internationally recognised expert in brain cancer with over 20 years’ experience studying the biology of adult and paediatric brain cancers.
Prof Day is a Co-Director of the Children's Brain Cancer Centre (CBCC), a Co-Director of the Australian Brain Cancer Research Alliance (ABCARA) and Chair of the Centre for Neuro-Oncology Excellence (CNE). These state and national initiatives seek to coordinate and align breakthrough research with Phase 1 clinical trials efforts for both paediatric and adult brain cancer patients across Australia.
He is active both academically and clinically in an advisory capacity for Co-Operative Trials Group for Neuro-Oncology (COGNO), Cure Brain Cancer Foundation (CBCF), Brain Cancer Biobanking Australia (BCBA) and the ONJCRI Brain Cancer CRE.
Prof Day’s laboratory has a strong translational and clinical focus, having generated impactful findings in brain cancer model development/biobanking, clinical trials support, Eph receptor biology and the development and testing of novel antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) and targeted brain-penetrant small molecules (CT-179) in pre-clinical brain cancer animal models.
A major achievement has been the development of the QIMR Berghofer/RBWH Brain Cancer Biobank and the generation of explant organoids and the QCell Panel of primary characterised GBM cell lines. QCell models have been used in numerous studies globally and have been published in >60 articles to-date.
Prof Day is a past ASMR Director and is the Deputy Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee for COGNO and the steering committee for Brain Cancer Biobanking Australian (BCBA) as such he is well placed to translate his findings to clinical trial.
Current Projects & Areas of Interest:
Defining novel therapies for the treatment of brain cancer
Defining Eph receptors as therapeutic targets in brain cancer.
Exploring the use of Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADCs) in the treatment of brain cancer.
Establishing a Glioblastoma Organoid (GBO) culture protocol in combination with single-cell RNA sequencing to study the gene expression in individual cancer cells.
Preclinical research to address the disease obstacles preventing meaningful research advances
Understanding intratumoural heterogeneity and interclonal cooperativity in brain cancer.
Developing effective strategies to target multiple GBM cell-states.
Brain cancer tissue and culture bank development
Ongoing development and distribution of QCell models to both academic and commercial collaborators
Characterisation of QCell recurrent models
Development of paediatric brain cancer tissue and culture bank