Preclinical Core

Children with cancer urgently need safer and more effective treatments.

The Preclinical Core team supports all childhood cancer research teams at The Kids Research Institute Australia, providing the expertise, infrastructure and rigorous testing needed to move promising discoveries closer to clinical trials and enable new treatment options for children.

Rather than operating as an independent discovery program, the Preclinical Core team is designed to enable and amplify the work of others. The team functions as a shared resource that increases the collective translational capacity of all cancer research teams at The Kids, helping accelerate the development of the most promising new therapies.

The Preclinical Core team bridges the gap between laboratory discovery and patient treatment. Working closely with researchers, the team evaluates new therapies using advanced preclinical models to identify those with the greatest potential to improve outcomes for children with cancer.

The Preclinical Core team is focused on delivering tangible impact: every experiment answers a specific translational question, every dataset informs a clear go/no-go decision, and every recommendation is directed towards bringing safer, more effective treatments to children faster.

Ultimately, the Preclinical Core team strengthens individual research programs while making the Cancer Centre greater than the sum of its parts. By providing standardised, high-quality preclinical evaluation, the team accelerates therapy development and generates the robust evidence needed to advance the most promising treatments into clinical trials.