Oesophageal cancer a rare but deadly disease

Suzanne Neate (The Aftershock CEO) and Prof Wendy Brown

As rare diseases have been in the spotlight this week with Rare Disease Day on 28 Feb, we are revisiting a feature last year on the support offered by The Aftershock for work by the CCS’s Associate Professor James Lee into thyroid cancer, then Professor Meng Law’s group investigating the deadly brain cancer glioblastoma, and Professor Wendy Brown's work on oesophageal cancer. 

See the story

Monash researchers bond with donors to fight rare cancers

Suzanne Neate (right) with her mother Teresa, who died in 2016.

Image: The Aftershock

by Anne Crawford

After Suzanne Neate’s mother Teresa died of thyroid cancer five years ago, Suzanne wanted to make an impact on the lives of other people similarly enduring high mortality rate cancers.

Teresa had spent time in rehabilitation; Suzanne thought of funding equipment, walkers or wheelchairs for those in care. “Then I thought ‘No, the problem is she shouldn’t have been there to begin with – how do you stop someone being there to begin with?’,” she said. “You research – everything comes back to research.”

Suzanne, CEO of The Aftershock, the not-for-profit organisation she founded in 2017, has joined forces on a research project into lethal oesophageal cancer with Professor Wendy Brown, Alfred Hospital surgeon, researcher and Head of Monash University’s Department of Surgery.