Children's cancer researchers win funding

Two young researchers at Children’s Cancer Institute Australia for Medical Research (CCIA), Dr Joshua McCarroll and Dr Marcia Munoz, were today awarded significant funding from the Balnaves Foundation to further their promising research into childhood cancer.

The fund is intended to enable young and promising researchers to gain funding early in their career before they've achieved the track record required to secure grants from the major funding bodies.

“It gives me great pleasure to know the Balnaves Foundation Young Researchers’ Fund is identifying promising talent and allowing young scientists to pursue new ideas to combat childhood cancer,” said Neil Balnaves, Founder of The Balnaves Foundation and former Executive Chairman of Southern Star.

Dr Joshua McCarroll’s research focuses on brain cancer, the most common cause of cancer death in children.

“Despite recent advances in surgery and drug treatments, the prognosis of children with brain cancer is dismal,” said McCarroll.

“Patients who relapse, often suffer toxic side effects of treatment while their tumours frequently develop drug resistance. I intend to use a relatively new technique, RNA interference, which can switch off genes by using nano-sized particles to carry in genetic ‘silencers’.

"The difficulty is these nano-particles often have trouble distinguishing between normal cells and cancer cells. I believe I have a way of making it easier for the gene silencers to work, by attaching molecules which allow the brain cancer cells to be marked out more clearly,” McCarroll said.

By silencing the genes that regulate cell survival and drug resistance, McCarroll’s work has the potential to improve the treatment and long term survival of childhood brain cancer patients as well as other difficult to treat cancers.

Dr Marcia Munoz also received funding towards her research focusing on neuroblastoma, which accounts for 15 percent of all cancer related deaths in children.

The long-term survival of children within high-risk neuroblastoma is less than 40 percent, so there is an urgent need for the development of better treatment therapies,” said Munoz.

“Tumours create their own inflammatory environment that helps them to thrive. In neuroblastoma, the cancer cells can pump out substances into the surrounding tissue that contribute to this inflammation. By better understanding this process, it should be possible to come up with new and improved therapeutic strategies,” Munoz said.

Professor Murray Norris, Deputy Director, CCIA said these awards allow fresh young minds brimming with ideas to take risks and hopefully make advances towards the CCIA’s vision to save the lives of all children with cancer and eliminate their suffering.

The awards were presented at a ceremony at NSW Parliament House by Minister for Science and Medical Research, Jodi McKay.