A $6.5 million cancer research grant will strengthen expert collaboration between Australia’s top scientists and doctors in the fight against children’s cancer.

Every year more than 600 Australian children are newly diagnosed with cancer, and approximately 150 will not survive this ordeal.

But a promising new professional network will bring research breakthroughs made at the Children’s Cancer Institute Australia (CCIA), the Children’s Medical Research Institute (CMRI), and Kids’ Research Institute (KRI) directly to the hospital bedsides at Sydney’s Children’s Hospital Randwick, The Children’s Hospital at Westmead and John Hunter Children’s Hospital in Newcastle.

Chair of the ACRF Medical Research Advisory committee (and co-creator of the cervical cancer vaccine), Professor Ian Frazer is currently working on a world-first strategy to combat skin cancer.

“This group of cancers (skin cancers)…may be started off by a virus infection – which presents a great opportunity, because the idea of vaccinating to prevent a cancer is enormously appealing,” Professor Frazer said.

Professor Frazer believes some virus types, including the wart virus or HPV, are embedded in the layers of the skin, and they pose a skin cancer risk when people with damaged or weak immune systems are overexposed to the sun.

A new anti-cancer agent is entering clinical trials to treat the most common type of leukaemia.

The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) in Melbourne is implementing the phase Ia clinical trial that will demonstrate the safest dose of ABT-199, a drug designed to block the function of the Bcl-2 protein which allows leukaemia cells to live longer.

The Lowy Cancer Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, will kick off National Science Week with an exclusive tour of  their ACRF Drug Discovery Centre for Childhood Cancer on Friday August 12, 2011.

The centre, which is part of the Children’s Cancer Research Institute Australia, was developed through a $3.1 million in ACRF funding.

It features Ham and Milton, two robots which work to dramatically accelerate the search for a cure for childhood cancer. These robots are the only two of their kind in Australia dedicated to childhood cancer research, and tomorrow high school students from Sydney will witness the wonders of this technology at a tour led by CCIA’s world-class researchers.

Researchers at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) have found a new anti-cancer agent called ABT-737 that targets and neutralises Bcl-2 “pro-survival” proteins in cancer cells.

The project was undertaken at WEHI’s world-class cancer centre, which has received significant ACRF funding over the last five years.

This funding allowed researchers to better study the characteristics of proteins from the Bcl-2 family which are found at high levels in up to 70% of breast cancers – including typically aggressive ‘triple negative’ breast cancers – and work to prevent cell death, even in cells that have been damaged by chemotherapy.