Recipient: Dr Belinda Kramer and Dr Geoff McCowage
Institute: The Children’s Hospital at Westmead
Funding: $4,309,610 July 2010 to June 2020
Immunotherapy treatment for children
Despite great progress in the survival of children diagnosed with cancer over the past few decades, improvements are yet to be achieved across all tumour types.
This project aims to develop an immunotherapy treatment for children with relapsed or refractory solid tumours, focussing on osteosarcoma, Ewing’s sarcoma, brain tumours and neuroblastoma. The immunotherapy in development involves the genetic modification of T-cells with a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) to target tumour associated proteins present on these paediatric solid tumours.
The long term goal of the program is to have CAR T-cell therapies available to patients at an earlier stage of treatment, rather than as an experimental option following treatment failure. Continued funding from The Kids’ Cancer Project will allow translation of the science into an early phase clinical trial that will lay the foundation to achieve this aim. The capacity building that stems from the efforts in initiating CAR T-cell therapies at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead will position to the team as a centre for CAR T-cell vector production nationally, and will produce substantial translational benefits for children with cancer more broadly.