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Chemotherapy is included in treatment regimens for many solid cancers, but when administered as a single agent it is rarely curative. The addition of immune checkpoint therapy to standard chemotherapy regimens has improved response rates and increased survival in some cancers. However, most patients do not respond to treatment and immune checkpoint therapy can cause severe side effects. Therefore, there is a need for alternative immunomodulatory drugs that enhance chemotherapy.
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.
Glioblastoma, a rare, and highly lethal form of brain cancer, poses significant challenges in terms of therapeutic resistance, and poor survival rates for both adult and paediatric patients alike. Despite advancements in brain cancer research driven by a technological revolution, translating our understanding of glioblastoma pathogenesis into improved clinical outcomes remains a critical unmet need.
Intravascular tumor extension is an uncommon complication of solid malignancies that, when present in the inferior vena cava (IVC), can result in fatal pulmonary tumor embolism. Currently, neoadjuvant chemotherapy and surgery are the mainstays of treatment; however, there are no consensus guidelines for management.
BRAF genomic alterations are the most common oncogenic drivers in pediatric low-grade glioma.
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.
Molecular profiling of the tumour immune microenvironment (TIME) has enabled the rational choice of immunotherapies in some adult cancers. In contrast, the TIME of paediatric cancers is relatively unexplored. We speculated that a more refined appreciation of the TIME in childhood cancers, rather than a reliance on commonly used biomarkers such as tumour mutation burden (TMB), neoantigen load and PD-L1 expression, is an essential prerequisite for improved immunotherapies in childhood solid cancers.
Dr Sébastien Malinge has received a Stan Perron Charitable Foundation Research Fellowship for his pioneering research, which is paving the way for safer, targeted therapies for children with hard-to-treat leukaemia
Cancer researchers have narrowed-down the field of immunotherapy drugs which could be used to tackle a form of childhood brain cancer.
Preclinical research from the WA Comprehensive Kids Cancer Centre has revealed a promising new strategy to protect bone health in children with high-risk B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (B-ALL), showing that actively rebuilding bone may deliver faster and more effective protection against debilitating fractur