Flipping the switch: The key to preventing cancer’s spread
4 min read 01 May 2025
Imagine a future where the spread of cancer can be switched off – stopping it in its tracks and saving lives. At Peter Mac, world-class researchers like Dr Ruby Bai are working tirelessly to advance these life-saving and life-changing discoveries.
Meet Dr Ruby Bai, whose ground-breaking research at Peter Mac has the potential to improve the way head and neck cancers are treated.
A ground-breaking approach to preventing cancer’s spread
Dr Ruby Bai, a promising researcher at Peter Mac, is dedicated to finding solutions for head and neck cancers. Her research focuses on preventing spread, a factor responsible for 90% of deaths in head and neck cancer.
Dr Bai’s team has identified a pivotal ‘switch point’ in cancer cells — a mechanism that directs the cells to grow locally or metastasise. As Dr Bai explains:
“If we can intervene and switch cells back from spread to growth, we can restrict the cells to the primary site. We can prevent metastasis, which is the major cause of death from head and neck cancer.”
By understanding what triggers this switch, Dr Bai aims to reprogram cells, to ultimately stop the spread of cancer and increase the effectiveness of treatments like chemotherapy.
You can help accelerate research like Dr Bai’s with a donation to Peter Mac.
Donate to accelerate cancer research
Why your support matters
Every year, more than 1,200 people in Australia lose their lives to head and neck cancer. Once the cancer spreads to vital organs like the lungs, liver or brain, 5-year survival rates drop to just 20% or less.
Dr Bai’s discoveries are already paving the way for new treatments, but there’s still so much to do. With your help, her research can move out of the lab and into the lives of patients like Danielle.
Danielle was like so many of us – busy juggling work, life and kids. She’d had some lesions on her tongue, but an initial biopsy was negative. But when a strange soreness developed in the side of her tongue, she made time to see an oral surgeon. That appointment led to the discovery of a ‘tiny’ tumour.
She needed surgery to remove the tumour. She believed it would be minor, but unfortunately the tumour was bigger than expected, and it had even begun to migrate into the nerves.
“90% of head and neck cancer deaths are caused by metastasis.” – Dr Ruby Bai
To tackle the cancer’s spread, and to give Danielle the best chance against relapse, she needed intensive radiation therapy. This reduced the risk of her cancer coming back, but left her with a painful, open wound stretching from her collarbone to her chin.
For people like Danielle, research like Dr Bai’s could be life-changing as well as life-saving.
Dr Bai’s project has four main goals:
- To understand the factors that trigger cancer cells to switch from growth to spread
- To use genome-editing technologies to modify cancer cells in the lab to prevent spreading
- To test this in a lab setting
- To investigate the combination of the approach with an approved therapy, to prevent cancer growth and spread
As Dr Bai shares: “This research offers renewed hope for those facing metastatic head and neck cancer and similar challenging cancers. By understanding the factors that drive head and neck cancer metastasis, this project will hopefully lead to improved survival rates and enhanced patient quality of life.”
Donate to accelerate promising cancer research today
Research like this can’t wait
Your support could help accelerate Dr Bai’s work and deliver life-saving breakthroughs sooner. Research like this has the potential to:
- Stop cancer cells from spreading to other parts of the body.
- Make treatments more effective and less invasive.
- Improve survival rates for people facing head and neck cancers.
For Danielle, this kind of intervention would have been life-changing. It could have spared her from surgery that removed almost half of her tongue and radiation therapy that caused lifelong side effects.
By supporting Peter Mac’s world-class cancer research, you’re helping create a future where cancer can be stopped before it spreads. Where treatment is less invasive, and where survival is the norm, not the exception. Your support makes this vision possible.
“Every individual impacted by head and neck cancer is more than a statistic – they are someone’s beloved family member with dreams and aspirations. This research is driven by an earnest desire to progress, to lighten the burden on patients and their families, and to contribute to the overarching mission of conquering metastatic head and neck cancer.” – Dr Ruby Bai
Thank you for being part of the cancer research team at Peter Mac.
“By supporting cancer research you’re creating more hope, you’re creating cures for cancer.” – Dr Ruby Bai
