Meet the Finalists: Illuminate PitchFest 2025

Project title: Mapping the brain's healing immune response post-surgery to develop new treatments for kids with brain cancer

Research area: Brain Cancer 

Brain cancer kills more Australian children than any other disease, and survivors face lifelong side effects from toxic treatments. Safer therapies are urgently needed for children.  

Surgery is a key part of treatment for children with brain cancer, where removing as much of the tumour as possible is critical to achieving the best survival outcomes. Brain surgery can activate the immune system and generate a wound healing response, but its specific impacts on the immune environment of the developing brain are unknown. This critical gap leaves researchers unsure which immunotherapies might work for children.  

In an effort to devise more clinically appropriate immunotherapies for children, Brittany’s research aims to address the treatment gaps by investigating the post-surgical wound healing and immune environment in the brain. By understanding age-related immune and healing changes in the brain post-surgery in children, compared to immune and healing changes in adults, these findings can help drive improved therapeutic strategies and treatments for young brain cancer patients.  

With her research, Brittany aims to fast-track clinical trials for kids and offer new hope for children facing this devastating diagnosis.

Project title: Early interventions for children with neurodevelopmental conditions to improve emotional regulation and mental health

Research area: Early Neurodevelopment (ADHD & Autism) and Mental Health

Children with neurodevelopmental conditions, such as ADHD and autism, often face challenges with emotional regulation, leading to poor mental health outcomes throughout life. 

Jack’s research is dedicated to improving the emotional functioning of children with neurodevelopmental and psychological conditions, through identifying the predictors of poor emotional functioning such as children who have difficulty recognising and describing their emotions. Current tests are not necessarily fit for purpose, making it difficult for clinicians to properly understand a child’s emotional regulation challenges, due to the unique circumstances of each child and family. 

With his research, Jack aims to better identify further predictors than what is currently available to clinicians to better assess children presenting with poor emotional functioning. This will help early tailored intervention approaches to prevent childhood mental illness and optimise children’s development and wellbeing throughout their development. 

It will also enable the development of guidelines and interventions for families, schools, and clinicians, to better support children with neurodevelopmental conditions, and improve children’s long-term behavioural, social and academic outcomes.

Project title: Stopping Strep throat in its track to prevent severe illness in kids

Research area: Strep A Pathogenesis and Diagnostics

Strep A is one of the deadliest bugs you’ve never heard of, responsible for the death of 500,000 people every year. While most Strep A infections cause mild illnesses of the throat and skin, some individuals are more susceptible to severe illnesses including sepsis, flesh-eating disease and chronic heart disease. 

Why some individuals suffer severe and life-threatening effects of Strep A is a central focus in Jua’s research. Understanding the interaction of Strep A with human tonsils (the first site of infection in the throat) is key to informing and developing improved treatments and vaccines to prevent the infection in the first instance. 

Jua’s work has already supported promising vaccine targets for Strep A, however further scientific evaluation is needed on how the bacterium binds to the tonsils and how the immune system responds to the infection. Through investigating the individual differences in the immune response to the bug and promising vaccines, Jua’s research aims to achieve pre-clinical vaccine development and reduce the considerable illness and death due to Strep A in children.

Project title: New therapy to improve recovery and survival for children with high-risk leukaemia

Research area: Leukaemia Translational Research 

Leukaemia is the most common form of cancer in children, accounting for about one-quarter of all cancer cases in children and adolescents. Despite remarkable therapeutic advances over the past 60 years, with five-year survival now exceeding 90 per cent for certain subgroups, some children with high-risk leukaemia remain an exception to this success and leukaemia remains the second leading cause of cancer-related death in children.   

Many children suffer from treatment-related side effects and poor responses to conventional chemotherapy. Laurence’s research focuses on testing innovative therapeutic approaches to improve the outcomes of children suffering from this devastating cancer. He is currently investigating a therapeutic agent called OM-85 (Broncho-Vaxom), commonly used to prevent chest infections.  His team has discovered that OM-85 can boost the immune system and accelerate normal blood cell production.  

Through this research, Laurence aims to use OM-85 to reduce severe side effects in children with leukaemia undergoing chemotherapy and bone marrow transplantation, ultimately improving their recovery and survival.

Project title: Improving lung health for children with wheezing and asthma through early diagnosis and targeted interventions

Research area: Respiratory Health

Every year, thousands of young children are hospitalised with severe wheeze and asthma, yet the factors that make some children more vulnerable to these acute respiratory illnesses remain largely unknown. This makes it challenging to manage the long-term outcomes for children in wheezing and asthmatic populations.  

To inform targeted interventions and improve health outcomes for children suffering from wheeze and asthma, Laura’s research aims to uncover the underlying causes that contribute to persistent wheeze to better understand why some children are more susceptible to this condition. By uncovering these causes, Laura’s research can help facilitate improved diagnostic testing to identify children at high-risk for recurrent wheeze and inform early-prevention strategies to stop asthma progression.  

By providing clinicians with improved early prognosis testing, tailored treatments can be developed to reverse asthma progression and ultimately improve long-term lung health outcomes for children.  

Project title: Combating antimicrobial resistance in children: Developing phage therapy as a safe, effective, and sustainable treatment.

Research area: Antimicrobial resistance

The World Health Organisation predicts that by 2050, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) will cause over 10 million deaths each year. Dr Renee Ng is actively involved in global efforts to develop safe alternative treatments to antibiotics, aiming to prevent a return to an era when bacterial infections often resulted in death.

Through her work in bacteriophage therapy, Renee is making a significant impact. Bacteriophages, or phages, are natural viruses that specifically target and kill bacteria, offering a promising solution to AMR. Her current work has reduced the time it takes to match the right phage to a bacterial infection by as much as 30 hours—an essential improvement for critically ill patients. Additionally, she has discovered that combining phages with other therapeutic compounds can effectively treat infections while minimising the toxic side effects associated with high doses of antibiotics.

Renee’s vision is to advance her work by making phage therapy a routine treatment option within the public health system. She aims to develop sustainable, safe, and accessible treatment solutions to protect patients at risk of AMR and mitigate its devastating impact. Her goal is to create a sustainable treatment option that is safe and accessible, utilizing complementary therapy with phages.

Project title: Otitis media immune exploration (OMIE) study to prevent childhood ear infections

Research area: Respiratory Infections

Imagine finding a therapy that can reduce the need for surgery and prevent long-term suffering in kids impacted by chronic respiratory bacterial infections. 

This is what Sharon is hoping to discover in her research investigating the immune pathways which are responsible for some children being more susceptible to repeated, chronic infections of the airways and ears. These infections can lead to significant health issues, including hearing loss and breathing difficulties.

A challenge in treating chronic bacterial respiratory infections is the formation of biofilms – a protective slime created by bacteria which make it harder for antibiotics to work. These biofilms often lead to ineffective treatments and the need for invasive procedures, such as grommets for ear infections.

Sharon’s research has already shown for the first time that children with chronic ear infections have reduced immune response to biofilm proteins. Over the next five years she aims to determine why this is the case so therapeutics can be developed to prevent biofilms from forming and stopping infections before they event start.

Project title: Whooping cough immunity: optimising vaccines for infants and beyond 

Research area: Vaccine Trials and Immunisations

Despite excellent vaccine uptake, whooping cough (pertussis) remains one of the most poorly controlled vaccine-preventable diseases in Australia. Last year we saw over 55,000 cases-the largest outbreak ever on record. 

Ongoing outbreaks and tragic stories, like that of Riley Hughes, a newborn who lost his life to whooping cough at just 32 days old, remind us that our current vaccines and schedules must be improved. Riley’s parents, driven by their grief, helped introduce maternal immunisations in Australia which now allow mothers to be vaccinated during pregnancy to pass on protection to their newborns. 

During her PhD, Sonia showed that these maternal antibodies can also impact how well babies respond to their other routine childhood immunisations which may leave them susceptible to dangerous infections. She is now committed to optimising vaccine schedules to ensure that everyone, from newborns to the elderly, get the right vaccine at the right time to stay protected throughout their life; and understanding how vaccines can interact with each other and the wider immune system.

By refining how vaccines are delivered, Sonia’s research aims to break the cycle of preventable illness, giving every child the best chance at a healthy start in life and ensuring no family endures the heartbreak of losing a loved one to a vaccine-preventable disease. With the right support, her work has the potential to transform how we protect future generations.

Project title: Improving support for children with Specific Learning Disabilities through early diagnosis

Research area: Human Development, Disability and Community Wellbeing

Children with Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD), including dyslexia, dysgraphia and dyscalculia, are at increased risk of school dropout, anxiety and depression. Early diagnosis can help prevent poor mental health and educational outcomes; however, this is difficult to access for many families despite SLDs impacting two in every three children in Australian classrooms.

Driven by his personal experiences, Thomas’s research focuses on developing a program to enhance the well-being of children with SLDs.

Through examining the experiences of children and families in obtaining an SLD diagnosis he aims to understand how parents seek a diagnosis, and their satisfaction with the process; explore barriers and facilitators to access a diagnosis; investigate the impact on children’s mental health when they receive a diagnosis; and co-design resources to help kids when they are diagnosed. 

The project will lay the groundwork for future initiatives Thomas plans to lead to improve diagnostic processes and co-design support for young people with SLDs.

Project title: Designing immunotherapies for children with brain tumours to reduce life-long side effects

Research area: Brain Tumour Research

There is an urgent unmet need to develop treatments for childhood brain cancers that are both more effective and less damaging to the developing brain. Current therapies have failed to improve survival outcomes for children with high-risk tumours over recent decades. 

Moreover, these existing therapies are aggressive and result in life-long side effects in survivors. While immunotherapies have minimised toxicity and improved outcomes in adult cancers, they have so far failed in children’s brain cancers. 

In her research, Zahra has uncovered vast differences in how the immune system of a child responds to cancer compared to an adult’s immune system. These differences have wide-ranging implications in the design of immunotherapies for children’s cancers going forward. 

In order to design immunotherapies for children with brain tumours, it is crucial to understand how the immature immune system of the paediatric brain responds to cancer treatments such as radiotherapy. 

By understanding these immune responses, Zahra will identify immune cells which can be harnessed to synergise with existing clinical approaches. This will facilitate rapid translation of treatments to clinical trials and improve outcomes for children.