This morning we got a visit from our Prime Minister!

Shalev was busy playing his iPad, but did manage to spare the camera man a few seconds to do a “blue steel” impression. That is a picture of Shalev on Ketamine and Fentanyl, a few hours prior to his immunotherapy infusion busy playing his iPad ![]()
It was very heartening to get the attention, paediatric cancers are very underfunded, bringing this to the public’s attention is a good thing.
The “zero childhood cancer initiative” is a new 20 million dollar grant to fund sequencing and targeted treatment for childhood cancers in Australia.
There are some details about the plans in the press:
CCI’s website has a pretty in depth explanation
My understanding of the program in bullet points
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Available to all childhood cancers with 30% survival rates or less (in NB’s case this would be relapse or refractory)
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Germline and tumor DNA will be sequenced on diagnostics and analyzed. (probably RNA expression as well, but need to confirm exact details)
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Individualised mouse models and cell lines will be tested against a series of experimental drugs (which is very exciting)
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Treatment will guided by the above
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The plan is to eventually expand this to all childhood cancer
I think this is very exciting and hope Australia manage to innovate in this space, personally I feel like this is absolutely the direction we should be going.