Translating Research into Care: Celebrating the 10-Year Partnership of The Kids’ Cancer Project and ANZCHOG
2025-02-10
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The Kids’ Cancer Project knows survival starts with science, which is why, since 2015, the charity has supported the Australian and New Zealand Children Haematology/Oncology Group's (ANZCHOG) mission to fund research through clinical trials.
As one of its first funding partners, The Kids’ Cancer Project has helped ANZCHOG significantly enhance its collaborative networks, increase clinical trial opportunities and enable a broader portfolio of clinical trials.
In turn, this has given Australian and New Zealand children with cancer more opportunities to access new drugs and treatments with clinical trials now considered best practice in childhood cancer care.
This beneficial partnership has also resulted in capacity and capability building, as shown by:
- Increased number of clinical trials
- Improved access for children from both a geographical perspective and an improvement in timelines for access, especially for rarer cancers
- Improved ability to engage with international collaborative partners
Throughout its 10-year partnership, The Kids’ Cancer Project has contributed over $2.47 million to ANZCHOG’s activities, with $1.725 million of funding facilitated via a Partnership Grant.
This has offered unparalleled funding flexibility, both for infrastructure and clinical trials, and has enabled ANZCHOG to address identified gaps in trial funding programs across all tumour streams – accelerating the commencement of new trials and increasing international trial participation opportunities for both Australian and New Zealand children and young people.
The Kids’ Cancer Project, CEO, Owen Finegan, says that research and clinical trials are the way forward when it comes to improving outcomes for kids.
“Across all childhood cancers, it is imperative that kids have access to potentially life-saving clinical trials. ANZCHOG is remarkable in its ingenuity and research collaborations that have increased over time and provided added opportunities for Australian and New Zealand children diagnosed with cancer to access the latest innovative clinical trials.”
The decade-long partnership with ANZCHOG and the impact of funding from The Kids’ Cancer Project cannot be understated. Over the past ten years as well as supporting innovative clinical trials the funding has also supported key infrastructure such as biobanking, databanks and analysis, as well as funding trial monitoring.
ANZCHOG CEO, Robyn Strong, says such flexibility in funding is critical.
“Conducting clinical trials is highly complex and often funding arrangements don’t cover all the critical aspects of managing a consistent, high-quality trial.
"The flexibility of The Kids’ Cancer Project’s funding has ensured trials can be conducted in the areas of greatest need and has increased ANZCHOG’s ability to respond to trial opportunities as they arise rapidly, allowing us to fill critical gaps, including areas such as quality assurance and monitoring plans to ensure the utmost safety of Australian and New Zealand children participating in clinical trials.”
ANZCHOG Chair, Professor Nick Gottardo, agrees stating that, “ANZCHOG’s clinical trial portfolio has grown exponentially, increasing from two open trials in 2016 to an impressive 36 trials open or in follow-up at the end of 2023. During this time, there were 3,000 trial enrolments, 657 of which were children and adolescents on therapeutic trials that directly impact their treatment path.
"This incredible growth wouldn’t be possible without the support of organisations like The Kids’ Cancer Project.”
The Kids’ Cancer Project’s funding extends across all cancer types, ensuring equity of access for all children and young people, while also allowing ANZCHOG to capitalise and leverage core funding to reach more children. An important aspect of this access is extending clinical trials to New Zealand.
Ms Strong is impressed by what the partnership funding has been able to achieve for New Zealand kids with cancer saying, “The Kids’ Cancer Project funding has been pivotal in opening clinical trials for New Zealand children and adolescents in instances where the Australian component has been government-funded.
"Leveraging the flexibility of The Kids’ Cancer Project funding to extend such trials not only provides better options for New Zealand families but also provides increased clinical data to support better treatment outcomes for children globally in the future.”
Additionally, it is an investment in strategically considered, efficient and accessible research resources as well as the functional component of ANZCHOG which is represented by data management and tumour banking. These are areas that synchronise with The Kids’ Cancer Project’s key research pillars of Translate and Build.
The partnership funding also provides flexibility in the workforce for ANZCHOG to use the best administrative resources to manage trials. Investing in efficient strategically considered and accessible research resources
Mr Finegan added the Partnership Grant has also provided ANZCHOG with the ability to facilitate due diligence across all areas of clinical trials.
On the tenth anniversary of the partnership with ANZCHOG, The Kids’ Cancer Project has pledged continued funding of $600,000 over the next three years to support the breakthroughs that are bound to come given the significant investment in research and development.