$20m funding for childhood cancer network

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has presented a cheque for $20 million to the Zero Childhood Cancer national child cancer personalised medicine program, said to be Australia’s biggest initiative in childhood cancer research.

Led by the Children’s Cancer Institute and the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network, the Zero Childhood Cancer network involves the detailed laboratory analysis of each child’s unique cancer cells to help identify the drugs most likely to kill their specific cancer. Scientists and doctors will work collaboratively to identify and deliver the most effective treatment plan, specifically tailored to suit each child’s individual disease.

“The Zero Childhood Cancer program is a wonderful initiative,” said Prime Minister Turnbull.

“It is designed to ensure that we deliver precisely the right drug in the right way, focused on the particular tumour of the particular child — in other words, highly targeted therapy that does less damage to other organs.”

The national network will connect 15 research centres in all major cities, ensuring children across the country are supported. It will operate in a hub and spoke model, with the Children’s Cancer Institute at the centre.

“It is a new level of collaboration across the country and indeed across the world,” said the Prime Minister. “It means better collecting and sharing of the vital information about the types of tumours, children’s response to treatments and the outcomes of the treatment. And most importantly of all, of course, it means new hope to children, their families, to quicker diagnosis, speedier treatment and better outcomes.”

This year, the program is in pilot stage — developing laboratory procedures, fine-tuning technologies and expertise, and establishing technical and operational pipelines. A clinical trial will run nationally from 2017–2020.

“This federal government funding will help us take a giant step forward by scaling up of the program to a national level,” said Professor Glenn Marshall, clinical lead of Zero Childhood Cancer. “It will help fund essential research infrastructure that will allow an entirely new level of profiling, analysis and therapeutic targeting of individuals’ disease, including immunological studies, protein analyses and gene sequencing.”

The ultimate aim of the Zero Childhood initiative is for every child with high-risk cancer — up to 1000 a year — to access the network’s cutting-edge technology, helping to push survival rates for childhood cancer towards 100%.

Image caption: Five-year-old Lulu, who was diagnosed with stage 4 neuroblastoma when she was just eight months old, accepts the Prime Minister’s cheque.