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Co-Head, Brain Tumour Research

Head of Paediatric and Adolescent Oncology and Haematology, Perth Children’s Hospital; Co-head, Brain Tumour Research Program, The Kids Research Institute Australia

The Kids Research Institute Australia researcher, Dr Raelene Endersby, will work to develop less toxic treatments for children with brain cancer, thanks to support from Cancer Council WA.

A new combination of drugs could help to increase survival rates with fewer side effects for some children with one of the most aggressive forms of childhood brain cancer.

Medulloblastoma (MB) consists of four core molecular subgroups with distinct clinical features and prognoses. Treatment consists of surgery, followed by radiotherapy and cytotoxic chemotherapy. Despite this intensive approach, outcome remains dismal for patients with certain subtypes of MB, namely, MYC-amplified Group 3 and TP53-mutated SHH. Using high-throughput assays, six human MB cell lines were screened against a library of 3208 unique compounds. We identified 45 effective compounds from the screen and found that cell cycle checkpoint kinase (CHK1/2) inhibition synergistically enhanced the cytotoxic activity of clinically used chemotherapeutics cyclophosphamide, cisplatin, and gemcitabine.

The Zero Childhood Cancer Program is a precision medicine program to benefit children with poor-outcome, rare, relapsed or refractory cancer. Using tumor and germline whole genome sequencing (WGS) and RNA sequencing (RNAseq) across 252 tumors from high-risk pediatric patients with cancer, we identified 968 reportable molecular aberrations.

PTEN mutation occurs in a variety of aggressive cancers and is associated with poor patient outcomes. Recent studies have linked mutational loss of PTEN to reduced RAD51 expression and function, a key factor involved in the homologous recombination (HR) pathway. However, these studies remain controversial, as they fail to establish a definitive causal link to RAD51 expression that is PTEN-dependent, while other studies have not been able to recapitulate the relationship between the PTEN expression and the RAD51/HR function.

The seven key challenges summarized in this Position Paper are intended to serve as foci for future research and investment in brain tumours

The ANZCHOG-BN was developed to improve and streamline access to high quality pediatric and adolescent/young adult cancer biospecimens for cancer research

We discovered a previously unknown major resistance mechanism in glioma in that most EGFR domain III-targeting antibodies do not neutralize EGFRvIII