Dr Laura Eadie has earned a $100,000 Channel 7 Children’s Research Foundation (CRF) grant, after discovering a gene that is suspected to play a major role in the development and proliferation of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) – the most common form of childhood cancer.

Dr Eadie says the funding will be used for single cell sequencing targeting T-cell ALL, an aggressive sub-type of the disease that accounts for up to a quarter of all cases.

It’s treated with multiple rounds of high-dose chemotherapy followed by lower-dose maintenance chemotherapy that may be needed for many years, causing debilitating long-term side effects.

“Typically, children with T-ALL are diagnosed at less than 10 years of age,” she said.

“Survival at five years is about 85% but for someone so young, the treatment and recovery is still often highly traumatic. Anything we can do to improve the efficacy and reduce the side effects of treatment is so important for these kids and their families.”

Dr Eadie has identified a cohort of children with abnormally high expression of this gene, which controls the cell cycle and helps manage when cells divide.

“This gene normally restricts division of cells that have cancerous mutations,” she said.

“However, we have discovered that children in our research cohort have fusions involving this gene likely causing its altered expression. We hypothesize that these fusions are involved in the early stages of leukaemia development.”

Dr Eadie’s was the top-ranked application in this year’s CRF grant round, earning her an award that was presented by SA Governor and CRF Patron, the Hon Frances Adamson AC, at last night’s Research Excellence Awards.

The CRF is dedicated to enriching the lives of children through research. It’s also passionate about retaining and fostering research talent in South Australia by promoting career opportunities.

Dr Eadie is forging an international reputation as an emerging leader in research that employs genomics for ALL treatment. She has earned a Cancer Council SA Beat Cancer Project Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholarship and an Australian Institute of Policy and Science Young Tall Poppy award.