Hudson News Summer 2024: Director’s message

Finding cures and better treatments for children’s cancers

Cancer kills three children every week in Australia – more than any other disease. And more than 1,000 children and adolescents are diagnosed with cancer each year – highlighting why our researchers are focused on trying to find much-needed cures and better treatments for children with cancer.

In this Summer 2024 edition of Hudson News, you will read a wonderful story about two young cancer survivors, Tianna and Raya, who were diagnosed at 12 and 11 respectively, who met each other while undergoing bone marrow transplants – and who are now both planning a future in science – one as a paediatrician and one as a pharmacist. Both girls spent time recently here at Hudson Institute in Dr Catherine Carmichael’s laboratory, being introduced to the scientific side of leukaemia.

Catherine is a molecular cancer biologist working to find cures and better treatments for children with leukaemia, which is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in children. Her research program is developing new laboratory models of leukaemia that more faithfully reflect the childhood disease. Her team is working toward identifying, developing and testing new treatment approaches specifically for Acute Myeloid Leukaemia.

Children are affected by a gamut of cancers, so Hudson researchers are working on how this cruel disease manifests itself in a range of different ways.

In this Hudson News we also share the story of Dr Paul Daniel whose work is focused on the highly promising use of combination therapies for brain tumours in children and adults.

Discovering which paediatric cancer treatments can be safely and effectively used together is a slow process. To accelerate this, Hudson’s Next Generation Precision Medicine team is testing thousands of treatment combinations on actual tumour samples to identify and prioritise effective therapies. A ground-breaking initiative of this team is the Childhood Cancer Model Atlas (CCMA) – the world’s largest collection of high-risk paediatric cancer cell lines, sharing findings with over 50 cancer research institutes, universities and academic medical centres worldwide.

Researchers like Dr Carmichael and Dr Daniel highlight why it is vital for us to explore every possible avenue for research funding and why every dollar you commit to our work makes such an important difference.

High-quality research requires significant funding, and it takes many years to bring an idea from the laboratory into the clinic.

The team at Hudson Institute continues to strive for cures and better treatment for children with cancer. It is a long road, but together we can continue to strive to overcome these challenges.

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Thank you for your support.

Professor Elizabeth Hartland AM
Director and CEO