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News & Events

Lab results confirm promise of new immunotherapy gel for kids cancer

Newly published research from The Kids Research Institute Australia and The University of Western Australia has found a gel applied during surgery to treat sarcoma tumours is both safe and highly effective at preventing the cancer from growing back.

News & Events

Why timing matters: How tumours respond to immunotherapy treatments over time

Researchers have identified key differences between cancers that respond to immunotherapy and those that do not.

News & Events

Researchers narrow down field of new treatments for most common childhood brain cancer

Cancer researchers have narrowed-down the field of immunotherapy drugs which could be used to tackle a form of childhood brain cancer.

News & Events

The Kids Cancer Researcher wins prestigious Cancer Council WA award

The Kids Research Institute Australia cancer researcher, Dr Jason Waithman, has been named Cancer Council WA’s 2021 Cancer Researcher of the Year.

News & Events

'Natural killers' potential new cancer weapon

The Cancer Immunology team at The Kids is investigating how the body's 'natural killer' cells can be harnessed to fight cancer – whilst also protecting kids from nasty chemotherapy side effects.

News & Events

WA Kids Cancer Centre researchers appointed to Brain Cancer Expert Advisory Panel

Dr Jessica Buck and Associate Professor Raelene Endersby have been appointed to the prestigious Australian Brain Cancer Mission Expert Advisory Panel.

Research

Disruption of cotranscriptional splicing suggests that RBM39 is a therapeutic target in acute lymphoblastic leukemia

There are few options for patients with relapse/refractory B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, thus this is a major area of unmet medical need. Here, we reveal that inclusion of a poison exon in RBM39, which could be induced both by CDK9 or CDK9 independent CMGC (cyclin-dependent kinases, mitogen-activated protein kinases, glycogen synthase kinases, CDC-like kinases) kinase inhibition, is recognized by the nonsense-mediated mRNA decay pathway for degradation.

Research

Transcriptional rewiring in CD8+ T cells: implications for CAR-T cell therapy against solid tumours

T cells engineered to express chimeric-antigen receptors (CAR-T cells) can effectively control relapsed and refractory haematological malignancies in the clinic. However, the successes of CAR-T cell therapy have not been recapitulated in solid tumours due to a range of barriers such as immunosuppression, poor infiltration, and tumour heterogeneity.

Research

Inflammation induces α1-adrenoceptor expression in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of patients with complex regional pain syndrome

Persistent regional and systemic inflammation may promote pain and hyperalgesia in complex regional pain syndrome. In this study, we investigated whether stimulation of α1-adrenoceptors on peripheral blood mononuclear cells might contribute to this inflammatory state.

Research

Improving compliance with swallowing exercise to decrease radiotherapy-related dysphagia in patients with head and neck cancer

Dysphagia, one of the most common complications in head and neck cancer (HNC) treated with radiotherapy, can severely affect patients’ quality of life. Currently, because no “gold standard” treatment exists, swallowing exercise remains the main rehabilitation strategy for dysphagia. However, patients’ compliance with long-term swallowing exercise is only 40%, thus, greatly compromising outcomes. This article aims to analyze thefactors influencing swallowing exercise compliance in patients with HNC and explains strategies developed to date for improved rehabilitation outcomes.