Luminesce Alliance funds new research

Luminesce Alliance is investing $1.5 million over two years into three innovative research projects aimed at advancing the understanding and treatment of hard-to-treat childhood cancers and genetic liver disease.

“The projects, grounded in consumer research priorities, utilise our precision medicine Enabling Platforms and bring together expert collaborators to accelerate discovery and improve outcomes for children, working towards our mission of transforming the prevention and treatment of childhood illnesses,” said Luminesce Alliance Executive Director Anastasia Ioannou.

Difficult to treat childhood cancers projects

The E2CAR Trial: A Phase I clinical trial to evaluate administration of EphA2 targeted CAR T cells to children with sarcoma.

• Lead Investigator: Professor Geraldine O’Neill, Head of the Children’s Cancer Research Unit, The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, The Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network.
• About the project

Treating Childhood Cancers by Small Molecule Mediated Reactivation of Tumour Suppressors.

• Lead Investigator: A/Prof Antoine de Weck, Group Leader, Computational Drug Discovery Biology Group, Children’s Cancer Institute.
• news story: https://www.luminesce.org.au/exploring-a-new-way-to-treat-childhood-cancer/
• About the project

Genetic Liver Disease project

Expanding the genome editing toolkit: evaluating novel gene editing strategies for the treatment of genetic liver disease in children.

• Lead Investigator: A/Prof Samantha Ginn, Senior Research Officer in the Gene Therapy Research Unit of the Children’s Medical Research Institute.
• news story: Our latest research could have a real impact for treating genetic liver disease in children
• About the project