Childhood Leukaemia

Assessing efficacy of infant T-cells to develop child-specific cancer immunotherapies.

Despite significant improvements, leukaemia is the most common cancer in children and adolescents, accounting for ~30% of all cases and is the second highest cause of death by cancer before 19 years of age.

Moreover, many survivors do experience serious long-term side-effects from current standard of care treatments.

Immunotherapy - treatments that help the body’s own immune cells fight cancer - has shown great promise in several paediatric and adults cancer, however its success is often limited by a phenomenon called “T-cell exhaustion”, where immune cells lose their ability to kill cancer cells over time.

This project aims to develop safer and more efficient immunotherapies for children with leukaemia and boosting the killing function of a young immune system, by limiting T-cell exhaustion, to ultimately improve quality of care and long term survival.

Based on solid preliminary results, this project will:

Study how leukaemia cells interacts with infant/children immune cells in response to immunotherapy,
Test the effect of adding targeted therapies to help the immune cells stay active longer,

Using age-appropriate immune cells from ORIGINS participants, combined with clinically relevant animal models, this research will accelerate the development of innovative immunotherapies tailored to children who developed cancer.

Investigator

Dr Sebastien Malinge, The WA Comprehensive Kids Cancer Centre
Courtney Kidd, ORIGINS Biobank Coordinator, The Kids Research Institute Australia
Dr Omar Elaskalani, The Kids Research Institute Australia
Professor Rishi Kotecha, The WA Comprehensive Kids Cancer Centre
Dr Laurence Cheung, The WA Comprehensive Kids Cancer Centre
Dr Jesse Armitage, The WA Comprehensive Kids Cancer Centre
Dr Kim Rice, Murdoch University
Ms Catherine Woulfe
Mr Andrew Fairs
The WA Comprehensive Kids Cancer Centre Consumer Reference Group

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About ORIGINS

Local Research. Global Impact.

ORIGINS is the largest study of its kind in Australia, following 10,000 women, their babies, partners, and siblings, from conception into early childhood through a series of biological samples, face-to-face appointments, and online questionnaires.

Its goal is to develop targeted, more effective prevention and intervention strategies that support all families to flourish throughout life.

The unique interventional long-term study is one of the most comprehensive studies of pregnant women and their families in Australia, utilising over 400,000 biological samples and 30 million data points to deliver innovative, accelerated real-world research outcomes that aim to improve the health and families of now and for generations to come.

The research platform is headed by Co-Directors Professor Desiree Silva and Dr Jackie Davis.

ORIGINS received core funding from the WA Child Research Fund, Joondalup Health Campus, the Paul Ramsay Foundation, the Commonwealth Government of Australia through the Channel 7 Telethon Trust, and the Stan Perron Charitable Foundation.