The Zero Childhood Cancer personalised medicine program recognises that to cure every child we need to develop tailored treatments to target each child’s individual cancer.
The Program, led by Children's Cancer Institute and the Kids Cancer Centre at Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick and research and clinical partners around Australia. After the program’s launch in 2015, the pilot study opened and has been running this year.
While initially 12 children were expected to be enrolled in the pilot study, we now have more than double this number enrolled, due to strong engagement and recognition of the need for a precision medicine approach from clinicians and families.
This year we’ve been getting ready for the clinical trial. We’ve used this pilot study year to:
- develop the laboratory procedures and protocols internally and with our collaborators to leverage multiple technologies and expertise to analyse clinical, genetic and biological data from patient tumours and their normal tissue
- build the national infrastructure for the program with the Federal Government providing $20M just last week – a major contribution
- identify and work to overcome technical challenges such as determining the minimum amounts of tumour sample needed for analysis, and maintaining sample viability during transport
- establish the program’s headquarters, the $1.5M ACRF Child Cancer Personalised Medicine Centre, officially opened by the Governor-General on 2 September
- engage our network of clinical and research partners across Australia and internationally, with new partners coming on board this year.
