Bumper round of cancer research investment in WA

Researchers anticipate the platform will provide better insight into juvenile brain cancer, while separate research will focus on improving outcomes for blood cancer patients following stem cell transplantation.

Advanced Therapies for Brain Cancer (ATBC) program will have the task of building the juvenile-age brain cancer immunotherapy research platform, which will allow researchers to study emerging approaches in models that more closely reflect childhood disease.

Brain cancer is a multi-faceted disease, so, rather than pursuing individual technologies in isolation, ATBC will bring together expertise from Perth Children’s Hospital, The Kids Research Institute Australia, The University of Western Australia, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, and Royal Perth Hospital’s Cell & Tissue Therapies WA.

Treatment options remain limited, and survival outcomes are poor for children diagnosed with diffuse midline glioma or diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma and adults diagnosed with glioblastoma.

WA Comprehensive Kids Cancer Centre Steering Committee Chair Dr Gervase Chaney said it was hoped researchers could build on each other’s findings and pursue the strongest leads as they emerge.

“By bringing together world-class researchers, specialist infrastructure and emerging technologies in one co-ordinated program, ATBC will strengthen Western Australia’s leadership in advanced cancer research and create new opportunities to translate scientific discoveries into better treatments for patients,” he said.

The team will sit alongside Australia’s only cell and gene therapy manufacturing facility with Therapeutic Goods Administration licensing and Good Manufacturing Practice capability at Royal Perth Hospital.

The project has been funded through the Cancer Research Trust, with Future Health Research and Innovation (FHRI) Fund, The McCusker Charitable Foundation and the WA Comprehensive Kids Cancer Centre through funds committed by the Stan Perron Charitable Foundation.

A total of $9 million of funding over nine years has been set aside for this project.

Meanwhile, the QUOKKA Project will bring together clinicians, researchers, and patients from WA and the United States to develop personalised approaches to post-transplant care for people with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML).

The research to be led by a team from Fiona Stanley Hospital (FSH) aims to replace the current one-size-fits-all approach to donor lymphocyte infusion with targeted donor cell therapies tailored to the specific immune needs of individual patients.

By better understanding how immune recovery occurs after transplantation, the team hopes to discover why recovery differs between patients, accelerate recovery, and improve long-term outcomes for patients globally.

QUOKKA chief investigator Dr Duncan Purtill said while stem cell transplantation offered many AML patients their best chance of survival, clinicians still don’t fully understand why some people recover well while others experience relapse or serious complications.

“While stem cell transplantation can be lifesaving, patients face an ongoing risk of relapse, infection, and graft-versus-host disease, creating a critical need for more personalised approaches to care after treatment,” he said.

While initial funding of $5 million over five years from the Cancer Research Trust’s WA Collaborative Cancer Research Grants program will support FSH carry out the QUOKKA Project, funding of up to $4 million to continue the work for another four years may be provided subject to progress.

The grant has been co-funded through the FHRI Fund.