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News & Events

Experts Pledge Global Assault on Kids’ Cancer

A global plan to tackle one of the most aggressive types of childhood brain tumours will be developed as a result of a meeting of international experts in WA.

News & Events

Beyond the horizon: improving cancer outcomes for Indigenous children

Dr Jessica Buck, a researcher at The Kids Research Institute Australia Cancer Centre and a Kamilaroi woman, is on a mission to address the unique challenges faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children with cancer.

News & Events

Lab results confirm promise of new immunotherapy gel for kids cancer

Newly published research from The Kids Research Institute Australia and The University of Western Australia has found a gel applied during surgery to treat sarcoma tumours is both safe and highly effective at preventing the cancer from growing back.

News & Events

Replication of rare aggressive brain cancer could pave the way for better treatments

In an Australian-first, The Kids Research Institute Australia researchers have developed a new tool that could improve outcomes for children with a highly aggressive type of brain cancer.

News & Events

'Natural killers' potential new cancer weapon

The Cancer Immunology team at The Kids is investigating how the body's 'natural killer' cells can be harnessed to fight cancer – whilst also protecting kids from nasty chemotherapy side effects.

News & Events

NHMRC funding boost to child health research

The Kids researchers will use nearly $8.5 million awarded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) to tackle health issues including respiratory disease, brain cancer, vaccination and Aboriginal health.

Research

Tretinoin improves the anti-cancer response to cyclophosphamide, in a model-selective manner

Chemotherapy is included in treatment regimens for many solid cancers, but when administered as a single agent it is rarely curative. The addition of immune checkpoint therapy to standard chemotherapy regimens has improved response rates and increased survival in some cancers. However, most patients do not respond to treatment and immune checkpoint therapy can cause severe side effects. Therefore, there is a need for alternative immunomodulatory drugs that enhance chemotherapy.

News & Events

WA Kids Cancer Centre researchers appointed to Brain Cancer Expert Advisory Panel

Dr Jessica Buck and Associate Professor Raelene Endersby have been appointed to the prestigious Australian Brain Cancer Mission Expert Advisory Panel.

Research

Long-term outcomes of symptomatic optic pathway glioma: 32-year experience at a single Western Australian tertiary pediatric oncology center

Optic pathway gliomas (OPGs) are associated with significant risk of visual and endocrine morbidity, but data on long-term outcomes in symptomatic patients is sparse. This study reviews the clinical course, disease progression, survival outcomes and long-term sequelae in pediatric patients with symptomatic OPGs in our institution over three decades.

Research

Reproducible Bioinformatics Analysis Workflows for Detecting IGH Gene Fusions in B-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia Patients

B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (B-ALL) is characterised by diverse genomic alterations, the most frequent being gene fusions detected via transcriptomic analysis (mRNA-seq). Due to its hypervariable nature, gene fusions involving the Immunoglobulin Heavy Chain (IGH) locus can be difficult to detect with standard gene fusion calling algorithms and significant computational resources and analysis times are required. We aimed to optimize a gene fusion calling workflow to achieve best-case sensitivity for IGH gene fusion detection.