Julie Morscio (KUL-LISCO) presented research on radiotherapy resistance in paediatric diffuse midline glioma at the SIOPE Brain Tumour Group Annual Meeting 2026 held in Athens, Greece from 15-19 September 2026. Her presentation explored how studies of patient tumour tissue and laboratory-grown tumour models can reveal changes in cancer cells after radiation. In her own words, Julie explains the key insights from her presentation.
“The presentation is about resistance to radiotherapy of highly aggressive and untreatable pediatric brain tumors (in particular diffuse midline glioma) that arise centrally in the brain. Radiotherapy is the standard of care and the only treatment that can temporarily induce a partial response, however the tumor always progresses resulting in overall survival of about a year. There is usually very little patient tumor material available as only at diagnosis a very small biopsy is taken. We study these patient tissues to understand the composition of the tumor and the interactions between the different cell types. However because we only have tumor tissue collected at diagnosis we have no idea about the impact of therapy on the tumor during treatment, how the cells change and why they resist. For this reason we also collect any fresh left over tissue after surgery and try to culture the tumor cells in the lab. These tumor models we use to study the impact of radiotherapy on the tumor cells to understand why they survive. We found changes in the tumor cells induced by radiation that may help the cells survive treatment and are now trying to block these changes to see if that makes radiotherapy more effective.”
