Meet three scientists finding cures for childhood cancer at the Children's Cancer Institute
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Every year, 950 Australian children and teenagers are diagnosed with cancer.
While the survival rate has risen to 80 per cent since the 1960s, nearly three children still die from cancer each week.
This is where the Children's Cancer Institute in Randwick comes in — it is the only independent medical research institute in Australia wholly dedicated to childhood cancer research.
On Saturday, about 20,000 international cancer researchers will attend the world's largest cancer conference, hosted by the American Association of Cancer Research in Washington DC.
To mark the five-day annual meeting, we spoke with three Australian scientists working behind the scenes to find treatments and cures for childhood cancer.
Professor Maria Kavallaris
Professor Kavallaris heads the tumour biology and targeting research department at the Children's Cancer Institute and is also the director of the Australian Centre for Nanomedicine.
She was one of the first scientists to work at the institute when it opened in 1984.
Her research has included identifying the mechanisms of resistance to anti-cancer drugs, and the development of less toxic cancer therapies using nanotechnology.
"Nanotechnology allows us to package either drugs or gene delivery targets within the nanoparticles, to try and destroy the tumour cells while trying not to damage the normal cells," Professor Kavallaris said.
The application of nanotechnology to silence cancer-causing genes or deliver chemotherapy directly to tumour cells to improve survival rates is a key focus of the institute's studies.
It will potentially make many drugs that cause often debilitating and long-term side effects much safer to use.
While research is still in its early stages, Professor Kavallaris believed the technique would be used in a clinical setting within the next five years.
Dr Cara Toscan
Dr Toscan is a postdoctoral scientist with the leukaemia biology program.
Her research focuses on understanding how drug resistance occurs in leukaemia cells and how to reverse drug resistance in clinical practice.
"We have over 100 different types of leukaemia [in the lab] at the moment," she said.
"The ones we try and get the most of are the ones that are really aggressive and really resistant to drugs, because they are the ones we want to work on.
"Kids who are diagnosed with leukaemia are on chemotherapy for two, two-and-a-half years, so we want to make the chemotherapy better for kids who are already sensitive to the drugs."
Almost 90 per cent of children diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, the most common childhood cancer, respond to chemotherapy.
However, a subset of children respond poorly to initial chemotherapy, and drug resistance is common in 15 to 20 per cent of children who relapse.
Most samples used in the lab are taken from patients at the Sydney Children's Hospital, although some types are shipped from Europe for research.
Dr Toscan encouraged younger students to move into science and medical research.
"If you enjoy it and are passionate about it, every day is different," she said.
Dr Karessa Mercado
Laboratory operations officer Dr Mercado works in the institute's Australian Cancer Research Foundation Drug Discovery Centre.
The centre uses advanced technology and robotics to research anti-cancer therapeutics and test their effects on cancer cells.
It is part of a personalised medicine platform called in-vitro drug sensitivity testing, and involves Dr Mercado screening approved or targeted drugs against patient tumour cells to find tailored treatment for high-risk childhood cancer patients.
The testing better informs clinicians, who can then develop personalised medicine plans for their patients.
"I look after the running of the lab, but we also have a team of eight researchers who all collaborate and get a lot of work done," Dr Mercado said.
"We can help change the way the decisions are made in terms of providing cancer therapy for patients undergoing relapse or aggressive cancer treatment."
The centre screens patient cells from the Children's Hospital at Westmead and the Sydney Children's Hospital, as well as for other hospitals and universities around the world.
The sophisticated robotics, equipment and data systems in the lab automate the testing process.
"Instead of having one researcher that might take one year to complete 50,000 drug screens on a particular patient's sample, [using the technology] might just take the researcher one week," Dr Mercado said.
"There's a lot of time saved for the patient."
Topics: science-and-technology, health, medical-research, cancer, careers, sydney-2000
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