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A first of its kind research program at The Kids Research Institute Australia aims to develop new strategies to better treat First Nations children with cancer.

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

Eight outstanding researchers from The Kids Research Institute Australia and the Institute-led Broome STEM Festival are finalists in the 2025 Premier’s Science Awards.

A review led by the First Nations Childhood Cancer team at The Kids Research Institute Australia has highlighted the urgent need for Indigenous-specific studies focused on cancer outcomes, survivorship and equity.

A groundbreaking study from cancer researchers at The Kids Research Institute Australia has identified a promising new therapeutic strategy for children battling the most common childhood cancer – B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.

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.

Cancer continues to be a leading cause of death globally. However, there remains a significant disparity in the reported incidence of cancer in developed countries, estimated to be 295.3 cases per 100,000 people, compared with only 115.7 in developing countries. Some of the reasons for this variation include lack of robust data collection with limited reporting systems, and insufficient data availability in the registries of these developing nations.

Children with Down syndrome (constitutive trisomy 21) that develop acute lymphoblastic leukemia (DS-ALL) have a 3-fold increased likelihood of treatment-related mortality coupled with a higher cumulative incidence of relapse, compared with other children with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL).

The bone marrow microenvironment (BMM) plays a key role in leukemia progression, but its molecular complexity in pre-B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL), the most common cancer in children, remains poorly understood. To gain further insight, we used single-cell RNA sequencing to characterize the kinetics of the murine BMM during B-ALL progression.

Cancer cells display DNA hypermethylation at specific CpG islands in comparison to their normal healthy counterparts, but the mechanism that drives this so-called CpG island methylator phenotype (CIMP) remains poorly understood. Here, we show that CpG island methylation in human T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) mainly occurs at promoters of Polycomb Repressor Complex 2 (PRC2) target genes that are not expressed in normal or malignant T-cells and which display a reciprocal association with H3K27me3 binding.