Richard Scolyer

it's not as likely that the immunotherapy would have an effect.

And in truth, the odds of it working or having an effect, no one knows.

But in my brain, from what we know on melanoma, for tumours that have what we call high tumour mutation burden and some other molecular signatures, we can tell which there's a higher chance of immunotherapy working.

But it's not cut or dry.

Some people with all those features that make you think they'll respond...

don't, and some people without them do respond.

So it's not 100%, but the odds are not that great that they'd work in brain cancer.

But it just seemed worth a crack to me.

Well, I didn't need convincing because I understand the field so well.

This is, you know, our whole team is at the cutting edge of what's developed for neoadjuvant therapy.

What happens next is based on what us pathologists see down the microscope.

So it was something that I knew a lot about, and Georgina's obviously a world leader in this field.

And for me, with this type of brain cancer that I've got, it's got tentacles or tree roots that extend everywhere that you can't see on X-rays.

The surgeon can't see when they get inside.

So the idea of getting a treatment that can identify the tumour cells and leave your normal brain cells alone, that's pretty appealing.

And Katie was very engaged in what was discussed.

But the difficulty was that if I didn't take chemotherapy, my survival rate would drop by 50%.

So six months would be the average survival.

And as doctors, we sign up to do no harm.

And so there's a significant risk associated with it.