The Quest for a bone cancer cure

Nathalie’s grant is co-funded with Cure Cancer, Cancer Australia and 66% by our principal supporter, the Can Too Foundation.

Nathalie is based at the Queensland of University Technology.

Nathalie was born in France, where she spent her early years. A Flamenco dancer and saxophonist, she studied dance from early childhood up to her undergraduate studies, and almost chose professional ballet training over science. With a family involved in classical music – some of them professionals – it was a hard decision for her to leave the arts.

Nathalie was studying for a degree in materials science when her grandmother died, and at first thought it would be impossible to switch direction and become a cancer researcher. Having moved to Australia when she was 25, she never let go of the idea and it took her several years and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering and Medical Physics to join the fight. “I’m glad I finally reached my destination,” she says.

Her Research

In her research Nathalie, a researcher at The Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation at the Queensland University of Technology, is looking to understand how and why cancers such as advanced breast and prostate cancer metastasise and thrive in the bones, presenting, to date, with no cure. She and her fellow researchers at QUT currently want to propose new and better ways of assessing prostate cancer when it has spread to bones. “This may help us find new contributors to cancer within the bone, and thus help unravel therapies that can one day be curative instead of palliative,” she explains.

Promising results of her work so far include the creation of a live bone tissue mimic in 3D in the laboratory. It has been used to study prostate cancer behaviour in a more relevant way compared with traditional two-dimensional methods, she says.

NATHALIE’S INSPIRATION

The people who inspire Dr Nathalie Bock have always been the patients. They are her greatest source of motivation, she says.

“Their resilience and fight for survival motivate me to put the same strength into my research, fighting on their behalf, to cure them one day,” says Nathalie,

Always in Nathalie’s mind, too, is her late grandmother, Simone Gambs, who’d been “the pillar of our family, largely raising my sister and me”. Brain cancer took her in less than two years, which was devastating for Nathalie and her family.

“I was 18 when she was diagnosed. I prayed and hoped she would recover, and didn’t want to believe she could die. When she did, it was a terrible reality check to accept that people do, indiscriminately, die of cancer, that there is, sometimes, no cure.”

The Importance of Funding

Nathalie views her Cure Cancer funding as an invaluable opportunity to continue her work on preclinical models for advanced cancer in bones. “Personally and professionally, it represents a key milestone, as it enables me to lead and sustain my independent research group, forging my own niche and following my own research ideas,” she says. “Nowadays there are more opportunities for early-career grants, which I’m grateful for. The competition is however fierce, and it’s hard to envisage an early career grant without a solid track record.”

Given the difficulties in getting funding, she says, researchers need limitless curiosity, drive, perseverance and resilience, in that order.

She believes cancer patients should stay hopeful because “hope can do miracles” and that donors to the fight should know their time, effort and contribution is the most invaluable gesture they can make to help one day find a cure. “A little makes a great difference,” she says.