How lab-grown tumours are helping personalise childhood cancer treatment with Professor Maria Kavallaris AM
At Cancer Council NSW’s Research Awards 2025, we had the privilege of hearing from Professor Maria Kavallaris AM, Founding Director of the Australian Centre for NanoMedicine at UNSW and Head, Translational Cancer Nanomedicine at Children’s Cancer Institute.
Professor Kavallaris is internationally recognised for her research into childhood cancer, in particular high-risk and treatment-resistant tumours. Her work combines cutting-edge nanotechnology with cancer biology to help improve outcomes for children diagnosed with the most aggressive forms of cancer.
With the support of Cancer Council NSW, Professor Kavallaris and her team are developing innovative ways to grow and study childhood cancer cells in the lab. Her work is bringing us one step closer to personalised treatment options for children who need them most.
Here’s Sophie Scott OAM, Adjunct Associate Professor, in conversation with Professor Kavallaris AM.
Can you start by telling everyone in the audience what area of cancer you work in?
I work in the Children’s Cancer Insitute, as you heard. I work on a number of different types – but my focus is on the most aggressive forms of childhood cancer. The high-risk cancers, where children have a very low survival rate.
Why did you choose childhood cancer to devote your life to?
The impact of childhood cancers is huge. In Australia, cancer is now the most common cause of disease-related death in children, which a lot of people are surprised to hear. We’ve eradicated many infectious diseases – and please, keep vaccinating your kids so that continues. Cancer is now a major burden.
To give some perspective, one in every 900 adults in Australia is a survivor of childhood cancer. That’s a good news story, but many live with lifelong health effects. It’s an area I’ve always felt is important to work on – if you can save the life of a child and they go on to live a productive life, that’s really meaningful.
You mentioned how many children end up in hospital from the side effects of treatment – not necessarily from the cancer itself. Can you talk a little about that?
Absolutely. If you think about it, while we’re here tonight at this lovely event, in any paediatric cancer ward across Australia, 50% of the children in there are being treated for the side effects of the very treatments designed to save their lives. Some of these side effects are life-threatening.
Often, the doses have to be reduced, which then reduces the effectiveness of the treatment. So, there’s still so much work to be done.
Can you share with the audience how cancer has touched your own life?
Yes, absolutely. When I was 21 – around the same time I joined the Children’s Cancer Institute – I was diagnosed with cancer. I went through very aggressive chemotherapy, which was often life-threatening and involved multiple hospital admissions. The side effects were terrible.
At the same time, through my work, I met many children and families also going through treatment. It really struck me – how do these kids even begin to understand what’s happening? Parents told me their kids didn’t want to return to hospital because of what the treatment was doing to them. That had a deep impact on me.
Then, seven years after my own diagnosis, my brother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He was only 30 years old. It was quite rare – and he didn’t have any treatment options. Six weeks after diagnosis, he passed away. That also struck me: there are many cancers, in both children and adults, where effective treatment options simply don’t exist.
We’re here tonight with Cancer Council NSW. Can you tell us about how their funding has supported your work?
The support from Cancer Council NSW has been amazing. They’ve funded a project I’m really excited about – we’ve developed a new technology, including a bioprinter, to grow tumours in a dish. These tumours grow in an environment that mimics the tumour microenvironment in the body.
This allows us to study how cancer behaves and, importantly, predict how a patient might respond to different drugs. Right now, most children with a certain cancer type receive the same first-line treatment – but doctors don’t know if it will work for that individual. Our approach is helping change that by enabling personalised treatment pathways.
Where are you up to with this work?
We’re at the stage where we’ve proven the concept works – we can grow and expand these tumour cells in the lab. This is important because when you grow these cells on a plastic dish, they often won’t grow properly. Our method lets them grow in a more natural way.
We’ve focused on aggressive cancers like high-risk neuroblastoma and soft tissue sarcomas and shown that the cells we grow maintain the genetic fingerprint of the original tumour. That’s crucial – if the cells change, they might not respond to drugs in the same way. This approach gives us a much clearer picture.
What difference does it make to you, as a leading scientist, to have Cancer Council NSW backing this work?
It’s transformative. I’ve had research funding in various forms over the years, but this particular project was really kickstarted by Cancer Council NSW’s support. Before the funding, we were dabbling – trying to develop the technology and work with patient samples. With Cancer Council NSW’s funding, we’ve been able to hire people and truly drive the project forward.
Final question – how optimistic are you about the future of childhood’s cancer if this support continues?
I’m very excited. The support we’ve seen tonight – from Cancer Council NSW and its fundraisers – is critical. Some of the projects funded tonight may not have secured support elsewhere. That kind of funding is essential.
For childhood’s cancer, it’s a very exciting time. We’ve had success with some cancers like acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, but in many solid tumours like brain cancers, neuroblastoma, and sarcomas, progress has been limited. I feel we’re now at a turning point.
Precision medicine – getting the right treatment to the right patient at the right time – is going to change everything.