Post-Chicago 2025 Brain Cancer Update

Dr Tam Bui is a staff specialist medical oncologist and the Medical Director of the Medical Oncology Clinical Trials Unit at the Concord Cancer Centre. She sub-specialises in neuro-oncology, upper gastrointestinal and breast cancers.

 

She completed her PhD through the University of Sydney on the topic of, 'Scanxiety: scan-associated anxiety in people with advanced cancers' in 2023. She is interested in improving outcomes of her patients with cancer through a considered, holistic approach towards the efficacy, safety and psychosocial impacts of cancer treatment.

Prof Brown is qualified as a specialist physician in clinical immunology and in medical oncology, a pathologist in laboratory immunology, and has research training in gene therapy and cancer immunotherapy. He obtained four years’ research experience working in the laboratory of gene therapy pioneer, Prof Malcolm Brenner, on gene transfer studies in murine models and on the development of related clinical protocols. 

He has >20 years’ clinical oncology experience sub-specialising in tumour subtypes of lung cancer and melanoma and >25 years’ experience in clinical protocol development including in early phase immunotherapy studies. He has led the RAH Cancer Clinical Trials Unit >12 years, and it has >12 FTE staff and a portfolio of >40 active trials. Brown has >140 peer-reviewed papers (46 since 2016) including in Lancet Oncol, J Clin Oncol, and Ann Oncol (>8000 career citations). He is South Australian node leader and a Board member of the Australian Genomic Cancer Medicine Program, administering rare and less common cancer diagnosis and treatment. 

At CCB, Brown investigates cancer immunotherapies in a preclinical and clinical laboratory research program, which includes translating chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell technology from preclinical model systems to the ongoing CARPETS phase 1 clinical trial. 

James Dimou is an early career neurosurgeon-scientist with subspecialty expertise in the clinical management and research of brain tumours. His neurosurgical philosophy emphasises the importance of providing compassionate, individualised patient care that is grounded in the best scientific evidence.

Having graduated from medical school at the University of Melbourne in 2003, he then trained in Neurosurgery across a number of Australasian centres, becoming a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 2017. He then spent a further two years in Canada expanding his training, through a combined clinical and research fellowship in Surgical Neuro-Oncology at the Foothills Medical Centre under the auspices of the University of Calgary. He then further augmented his skills in brain tumour-related clinical care and scientific research with additional observerships in Zurich, Switzerland and Toronto, Canada, after receiving the Cooperative Trials Group for Neuro-Oncology (COGNO) Hubert Stuerzl Memorial Neuro-oncology Educational Award in 2016. Furthermore, he has recently commenced a Senior Executive MBA at Melbourne Business School, with the long term aim of leading transformative research and innovation in Neuro-oncology.

James continues to be an active contributor to the neurosurgical research community. In 2013, he was awarded a PhD from the University of Melbourne, for translational research exploring the molecular biology and therapeutic targeting of glioma stem cells, receiving accolades from the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies (WFNS) for best research presentation by a Young Neurosurgeon two years earlier. He continues to publish his own research, acts as a regular reviewer for the World Neurosurgery journal, and was recently appointed to the Editorial Board of the Journal of Clinical Neuroscience. His appointment at the University of Melbourne as a Clinical Lecturer in the Department of Surgery (RMH), co-leadership of the Parkville Precinct Brain Tumour Research Group, and active membership in the RMH Surgical Educators’ Group, underlines his commitment to medical and neurosurgical education.

James holds public appointments as a neurosurgeon at The Royal Melbourne Hospital and Western Health. He operates in private exclusively at Melbourne Private Hospital. 

Dr Neda Haghighi graduated from the faculty of health sciences, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. After gaining the FRANZCR, she completed an extended Fellowship in intra-cranial and extra-cranial Stereotactic Radiotherapy at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne. 

She leads the Victorian Gamma Knife service and the neuro-oncology unit at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and holds a position as a senior Radiation Oncologist at Icon Cancer Centre. Dr Haghighi is involved as a primary investigator and co-investigator of international and local clinical trials, relating to radiation treatment and radiosurgery for primary and secondary brain tumors. Dr Haghighi has published several peer reviewed journal articles in high impact neuro-oncology journals. She is an active member of International Society of Radiosurgery (ISRS), International Radiosurgery Research Foundation (IRRF), Trans Tasmanian Radiation Oncology Group (TROG), and Cooperative Trials Group for Neuro-Oncology (COGNO). DR Haghighi chairs the Stereotactic Interest Group of Australasia (SIGA) and is a committee member on CNS disease specific interest groups. She possesses superior knowledge in management of tumors of the brain and spine with special interest in radiosurgery for the treatment of skull base tumors as well as functional neurological disorders.