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News & Events

The Kids Research Institute Australia’s cancer researchers will use funds raised in the name of a brave three-year-old girl to launch a new assault on the devastating form of childhood cancer which took her life.

News & Events

Join us as WA’s cancer research community comes together at the inaugural West Coast Cancer Meeting.

News & Events

One of The Kids Research Institute Australia’s leading young researchers will travel to the world’s premier conference on childhood brain cancer.

News & Events

Researchers from The Kids Research Institute Australia will share in almost $4 million in grants to continue groundbreaking research to tackle childhood cancer, asthma, respiratory viral infections and more.

News & Events

In the field of cancer research, lobbying efforts by the The Kids Cancer Centre have contributed to major initiatives including Australia’s first personalised medicine program for children with high-risk cancer, and a mission to boost survival rates in brain cancer patients.

News & Events

A team of world-leading scientists has secured $5 million in funding from the Leukaemia and Lymphoma Society to advance the fight against leukaemia in children with Down syndrome.

News & Events

Researchers at The Kids Research Institute Australia and UWA will use a $500,000 CUREator grant to progress the development of the first cancer immunotherapy in a tablet.

Research

Children with Down syndrome (constitutive trisomy 21) that develop acute lymphoblastic leukemia (DS-ALL) have a 3-fold increased likelihood of treatment-related mortality coupled with a higher cumulative incidence of relapse, compared with other children with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL).

Research

Unlike adults, malignant melanoma in children and adolescents is rare. In adult melanoma, significant progress in understanding tumor biology and new treatments, including targeted therapies and immunotherapy have markedly improved overall survival. In sharp contrast, there is a paucity of data on the biology and clinical behavior of pediatric melanoma. We report a national case series of all pediatric and adolescent malignant melanoma presenting to ANZCHOG Childhood Cancer Centers in Australia and New Zealand.

Research

Immunotherapy has revolutionised the treatment of cancers by harnessing the power of the immune system to eradicate malignant tissue. However, it is well recognised that some cancers are highly resistant to these therapies, which is in part attributed to the immunosuppressive landscape of the tumour microenvironment (TME). The contexture of the TME is highly heterogeneous and contains a complex architecture of immune, stromal, vascular and tumour cells in addition to acellular components such as the extracellular matrix. While understanding the dynamics of the TME has been instrumental in predicting durable responses to immunotherapy and developing new treatment strategies, recent evidence challenges the fundamental paradigms of how tumours can effectively subvert immunosurveillance. Here, we discuss the various immunosuppressive features of the TME and how fine-tuning these mechanisms, rather than ablating them completely, may result in a more comprehensive and balanced anti-tumour response.