Each year almost 1,000 Australian children are diagnosed with childhood cancer and 5,600 are undergoing treatment.
For every ten children diagnosed, two will not survive; and those who do suffer long-term (sometimes life-long) health issues because current therapies can affect children’s growing bodies.
The development of more targeted and less toxic treatments for children with cancer is crucial to improve survival rates and reduce long-term treatment-related side effects.
In Australia, more than 1,000 children and adolescents are diagnosed with cancer each year.
Cancer kills three children every week in Australia – more than any other disease.
Almost half of all children diagnosed with cancer in Australia are aged 0-4 years old.
Our childhood cancer research
Hudson Institute’s Childhood Cancer Program aims to revolutionise outcomes for children with cancer. A world leader in the field, Hudson Institute brings together a multidisciplinary team of researchers, clinicians, and bioinformaticians to tackle some of the most challenging paediatric cancers.
Research focus
This program aims to improve survival rates and long-term health outcomes for children with cancer focusing on rare, low-survival, and difficult-to-treat cancers, including
Central to our mission is the recognition that children are not small adults – their developing bodies require specialised approaches that minimise the long-term impacts of cancer treatment. By developing targeted, less toxic treatments, we aim to enhance both treatment efficacy and quality of life for young patients.
Programs
Next Generation Precision Medicine program
The Next Generation Precision Medicine Program aims to identify the next wave of paediatric cancer-targeted therapies, particularly for childhood cancers with the lowest survival rates such as soft tissue tumours and brain cancers.
The program established the Childhood Cancer Model Atlas (CCMA), the world’s largest collection of paediatric cancer cell lines, providing an invaluable resource for researchers globally.
By analysing the more than 500 cell lines in the CCMA, alongside functional genomic screens, multi-omics characterisation and AI-driven approaches, the team is developing targeted therapies to improve outcomes for young patients with high-risk malignancies.
The Sarcoma program tackles the challenges of childhood and adolescent sarcomas, rare cancers affecting connective tissues. Despite being common solid tumours in children, sarcoma survival rates have stagnated for decades.
This program combines clinical and discovery research, utilising patient tissues and advanced preclinical models to improve outcomes. Key focus areas include identifying molecular signatures for personalised treatment, exploring therapy resistance mechanisms, developing new therapies for metastatic sarcomas, and enhancing immunotherapy responses.
This comprehensive approach aims to advance diagnosis, treatment, and management strategies for young sarcoma patients.
The Childhood Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML) program addresses a critical need in paediatric oncology. Leukaemia is the most common cancer diagnosed in children and second leading cause of cancer-related death. AML accounts for ~20% of all childhood leukaemias but has the poorest prognosis. Nearly half of all children with AML will relapse following therapy, and treatment options for these children are very limited.
The program aims to transform AML therapy through developing innovative new childhood AML laboratory models using cord blood stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells. These models will enable the identification of key disease mechanisms, large-scale screening for new drug targets, and exploration of immunotherapy approaches.
The goal is to improve survival rates and reduce long-term treatment side effects in young AML patients.
The Childhood Cancer Immunotherapy program focuses on developing targeted, less toxic treatments for paediatric cancers. Using advanced immunopeptidomics and proteomics technologies, researchers aim to identify novel targets for cancer vaccines and immunotherapies.
The program emphasises precision medicine approaches for aggressive childhood cancers like high-grade gliomas, Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG), and Ewing Sarcoma. By analysing antigenic peptides on cancer cells, the team seeks to enhance treatment efficacy while reducing side effects.
This cutting-edge research offers new hope for improving survival rates and quality of life for young cancer patients.
The Advanced Informatics program leverages cutting-edge computational approaches to tackle low-survival paediatric cancers. Utilising multi-omics data analysis and AI-based methods, researchers aim to identify new therapeutic targets and biomarkers.
The program integrates information from whole-genome sequencing, RNA-sequencing, proteomics, epigenomics and functional CRISPR screens to find biomarker-informed new therapeutic targets.
This comprehensive approach, applied within the framework of the Childhood Cancer Model Atlas (CCMA), provides a holistic view of cellular processes in paediatric cancers aiming to predict and prioritise new therapeutic targets and biomarkers, to advance precision medicine in paediatric oncology.
