Col Reynold Fellow, Dr Emmy Fleuren

Dr Emmy Fleuren is one of nine Col Reynolds Fellows inductees in 2024. Leading the Sarcoma Biology and Therapeutics Group at The Children’s Cancer Institute, the only Australian research laboratory that focuses on sarcoma in young people, Dr Fleuren and her team are utilising new discoveries to create innovative treatments for kids with sarcoma.

Innovative techniques, including phosphoproteomics, are being used to find novel drug targets, discover new and better treatments, and to create robust laboratory data to make new drugs a treatment reality for young sarcoma patients. 

Dr Fleuren spoke with The Kids’ Cancer Project about her research, discoveries and being a Col Reynolds Fellow.

What initially motivated you to become a researcher into kids’ cancer?

Cancer as a disease has always fascinated me. How is it, that at a given point in time, your body’s cells suddenly act weird and grow uncontrollably? 

My interest in sarcoma started while working on my PhD in the Netherlands. My project focused on tackling osteosarcomas and Ewing sarcomas, which are difficult-to-treat types of bone cancers predominantly affecting adolescents and young adults.

One girl with Ewing sarcoma had short hair, and apart from missing a foot, she looked lively and healthy. She received all available treatments but sadly she didn’t make it. That hit me hard, and starting there and then I was determined to do something to help young sarcoma patients.

My ultimate hope is that we can find a tumour-specific and non-toxic drug for every child with cancer. As children with sarcoma are currently often the ones who are missing out on these new drugs, my focus is on making such new drugs a treatment reality for them.

 Treatments really haven’t changed for sarcoma at all in the past 40 years. How does your research differ from what has come before?

My research into childhood sarcomas is unique as I’m coupling a range of innovative technologies, like phosphoproteomics (which identifies, catalogues, and characterises proteins), to an active clinical precision medicine platform called the ZERO Childhood Cancer Program. 

This not only helps pinpoint the most promising drug targets that may have been missed using other techniques, but also ensures that when we find something exciting in the lab, I can accelerate the clinical translation of these findings through thanks to my direct link with clinicians treating sarcoma patients.

The ZERO Childhood Cancer Program identifies targeted treatments for each Australian child with cancer, but unfortunately, there are still many sarcoma patients missing out on these targeted drugs. This is what I want to change.

And how do you plan to ensure you can make that change?

My first aim is to identify new drugs or drug targets for young sarcoma patients through a novel multilateral discovery platform. Next, I will subject top drug targets and associated drugs to a robust “functional validation platform”, to systematically trial in-vitro and in-vivo sarcoma models to learn if the selected drugs will truly stop the growth of human sarcoma models grown in our laboratory. From there I will build the most compelling laboratory data, to help clinical translation of research findings. This is globally unique. 

How does it feel to be a recipient of the Col Reynolds Fellowship?

Humbled, honoured, incredibly grateful! In an earlier study, we provided proof that my research can build robust laboratory data to positively affect the life of a child with sarcoma. I can now expand on this, aiming to make more new drugs a treatment reality for more young sarcoma patients. This is just such an incredibly exciting moment in time.

This Fellowship will advance my research career in critical areas and enable me to put my translational sarcoma research at the forefront worldwide. As a mid-career researcher, leadership and increasing seniority are essential elements to success. This Fellowship allows me to expand my sarcoma program, strengthen my profile as a research leader and grow my international reputation.

Without the support of our incredible donor community, our charity would not be able to fund researchers. Would you like to share a message of thanks to those donors?

Thank you SO much for making this happen! We can only get to better outcomes for children with cancer through research. I honestly could not be doing my research without your generous support, and I am immensely grateful for your time and effort into raising critical funds to support children’s cancer research. 

We have already seen our earlier laboratory discovery make a real impact on the life of a child with sarcoma, and with your help I aim to make this happen for more young cancer patients. We are on to something here and you are helping to make this happen. Thank you so much again for supporting my research, and that of other brilliant childhood cancer researchers.