Jem-Bot starts work - DomPost
Jemima Gazley's 'JEM-bot' begins cancer-detection work
Written by Bess Manson and published online and in the DomPost, Sep 22, 2022
Wellington teenager Jemima Gazley’s determination to be part of the cure for a cancer that ended her own short life has come to fruition: The “JEM-bot”, funded with money she raised as she was dying with an aggressive brain tumour, will begin operating this week.
The robot will speed up the research process in the race to find better treatment and ultimately a cure for diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG).
It will be partly funded with the $725,000 Jemima raised as she was dying. Rather than use the money to support salaries of researchers, which can eat up about $150,000 a year, “we wanted something that was for perpetuity, forever, that would be a game changer”, Dun said.
The world's first DIPG-specific robotic equipment costing $1.2 million was paid for with the money from Jemima’s Wish charity and augmented by funds Dun had raised through his own charity running marathons.
The JEM-bot would eliminate human error and speed up the work of testing combinations of drugs on tumours by 400 times, said associate professor Dr Matt Dun, who is undertaking the work at his University of Newcastle lab in New South Wales.
The work is personal for Dun, who lost his 4-year-old daughter Josie to DIPG in 2019.
“DIPGs are super complex and the leading cause of death in children [with brain cancer]. The money that Jemima raised through her advocacy of the disease enabled us to do something really significant,” he said. “The JEM-bot will eliminate human error and speed up the work by 400 times.”
As well as raising hundreds of thousands of dollars, Jemima, who was 15 when she succumbed to the disease in October last year, made the decision to donate her tumour on her death.
The JEM-bot, made in the United States and ready for work by the end of the week, would put Jemima’s cells to work in the Wish Lab, named after her charity, a specially designed laboratory adjoining Dun’s own on the University of Newcastle campus.
By donating her tumours, Jemima was able to create her own cell-lines, which will be shared with the rest of the world to help other researchers trying to unlock clues to this disease.
Researches at Dun’s lab were already making progress with the cells. The JEM-bot would speed up progress for better treatment and move towards a cure, he said.
Dun was extremely moved by Jemima’s decision to donate her tumours.
“She was incredibly courageous. To want to be part of the solution knowing she was leaving behind so much,” he said in a phone interview.
“I can understand that really difficult thought process of donating her brain, the important thing that makes up a personality – compassion, humility. It is a difficult thing to do. I didn’t do it for Josie. I am in awe of the way she must have thought about this, the way she was able to rise above it.
“She will never be forgotten. She will always be known for being the girl that helped to unlock the secrets of DIPG.”
Jemima’s parents, Ray and Oliver Gazley, said they were so proud of their girl.
“She made it her mission to help the lives of others who are given the same terrible news, knowing her own would be short,” Oliver Gazley said from Bali, the penultimate stop on their way home from 10 months’ travelling abroad with the family following Jemima’s death.
“We are still blown away how Jemima managed to make the decisions she made at 15. The courage is incredible,” he said.
“To know that her selfless drive to raise money and bring awareness to DIPG has now funded the world's first and only diffuse midline glioma-specific drug screening robot makes us so proud. We miss her so much but news like this gives us hope that one day we will have a cure.”
The Gazley family will unveil a plaque at the Wish Lab in October. The words underneath the plaque are Jemima's own. They say it all: “If I can't be cured, I’ll be the cure.”
