Search
In recent decades, the conduct of uniform prospective clinical trials has led to improved remission rates and survival for patients with acute myeloid leukaemia and acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. However, high-risk patients continue to have inferior outcomes, where chemoresistance and relapse are common due to the survival mechanisms utilised by leukaemic cells.
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.
Copy number alterations (CNAs), resulting from the gain or loss of genetic material from as little as 50 base pairs or as big as entire chromosome(s), have been associated with many congenital diseases, de novo syndromes and cancer. It is established that CNAs disturb the dosage of genomic regions including enhancers/promoters, long non-coding RNA and gene(s) among others, ultimately leading to an altered balance of key cellular functions.
Children receiving treatment for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) are at high risk of invasive fungal disease (IFD). Evidence from pediatric studies support the efficacy of antifungal prophylaxis in reducing the burden of IFD in children receiving therapy for AML, yet existing antifungal agents have specific limitations and comparative data to inform the optimal prophylactic approach are lacking.
Siblings of children with cancer have been shown to experience disruption in multiple domains including family, school, and friendships. Existing literature on siblings' experiences focuses on older children or on a broad range of ages.
Children with Down syndrome (DS) are at increased risk of developing haematological malignancies, in particular acute megakaryoblastic leukaemia and acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. The microenvironment established by abnormal haematopoiesis driven by trisomy 21 is compounded by additional genetic and epigenetic changes that can drive leukaemogenesis in patients with DS.
Event-free survival considers other adverse events in addition to mortality. It therefore provides a more complete understanding of the effectiveness and consequences of treatment than standard survival measures, but is rarely reported at the population level for childhood cancer.
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.
Pediatric patients with recurrent and refractory cancers are in most need for new treatments. This study developed patient-derived-xenograft (PDX) models within the European MAPPYACTS cancer precision medicine trial.
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.