leading-professor-of-pathology-cancer-warrior
Richard Anthony Scolyer AO (born 16 December 1966) is an Australian pathologist. He is a senior staff specialist in tissue pathology and diagnostic oncology at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.
In June 2023, Scolyer was diagnosed with a stage 4 glioblastoma IDH wild-type brain tumour. With treatment for glioblastoma mostly unchanged for the last 20 years, Georgina Long worked to develop a world-first treatment for Scolyer’s brain tumour based on breakthroughs in melanoma research. Scolyer underwent experimental combination immunotherapy before and after surgical excision of the tumour, delaying his surgery to do so. Scolyer was also administered a cancer vaccine personalised to the tumour genetic markers, in order to help the immunotherapy detect the cancer cells. His treatment was documented in the journal Nature Medicine, paving the way for future clinical trials. While medical oncologists have applied these techniques successfully to melanoma, this treatment is non-standard for brain cancer due to concerns about toxicity, whether drugs will reach the brain, and speed of tumour development.
In February 2024, eight months after surgery, Scolyer’s cancer had not returned. This was an encouraging result with potentially broader implications due to the pioneering approach taken, with the normal prognosis for this glioblastoma being six to nine months, though oncologists warned that it was too early to judge the effectiveness of the treatment, compared to standard protocols. On 10 March 2025, Scolyer announced the cancer had returned, and he was given a prognosis of three months.
