An unwelcome visitor: How cancer cells enter the brain
Event Information
About this event
Please use this link to view the live stream event on the 15 September once registered for a ticket: https://neurological.org.nz/an-unwelcome-visitor-how-cancer-cells-enter-the-brain
The blood-brain barrier is one of our greatest shields against certain diseases and illnesses that may affect the brain. It helps project our brain when we have fevers or infections and keeps all the bad cells that are in our body out. But what happens when the blood brain barrier fails? What happens when the illness tricks it way into our brain – how can we protect ourselves then?
Akshata Anchan, doctoral candidate and researcher at the Centre for Brain Research at the university of Auckland, has been investigating this phenomenon for the last three years. With the help of a Gillespie Scholarship from the Neurological Foundation, she has been researching how cancer cells specifically get through our blood brain barrier undetected and infect our brains.
In this Discovery Session, audience members will be able to find out what exactly the blood brain barrier does, how it protects our brains and what is so unique about cancer cells that they can trick our barriers to let them through into our brains.
Meet the presenter: Akshata Anchan
Akshata Anchan is a Doctoral Candidate in the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at the University of Auckland. She is a recipient of the Gillespie Scholarship with the Neurological Foundation. Akshata is currently working under the supervision of Dr Scott Graham on research that focuses on how cancer cells get through the blood brain barrier.
Organiser The Neurological Foundation of New Zealand
Organiser of An unwelcome visitor: How cancer cells enter the brain
The Neurological Foundation is an independent body and charitable trust that raises funds to ensure this country’s top neuroscientists can continue leading-edge research into neurological disorders. Our mission is to alleviate suffering from diseases and disorders of the brain and nervous system through research and education.
We share a vision with these scientists: to progress research so that significant advances can be made in the prevention and cure of neurological disorders. One day, this will greatly reduce the level of suffering and premature death from diseases of the brain and nervous system. Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and motor neurone diseases, stroke, multiple sclerosis, migraine, epilepsy and traumatic brain injury are just a few of the wide spectrum of disorders that are the focus of the research we fund. These disorders are brutal and uncompromising, and with the rapid growth of New Zealand’s ageing population, an epidemic of neurodegenerative disorders is predicted in the coming decades.
