In paediatric cancer wards around the world, there’s a bittersweet moment that every family of a child who has undergone a stem cell treatment knows. After celebrating a successful procedure, their doctor delivers good news that carries a shadow of fear: “The transplant worked. Now we wait – the next 100 days will be the most challenging.”
It’s a cruel irony that to save these children’s lives, medicine must first render them defenceless. During the vulnerable months after a transplant, a simple cold can become life-threatening as young bodies must rebuild their immune systems from scratch.
Haematopoietic stem cell transplants (HSCT) are a proven treatment that offers the potential for cure for more than 10,000 children, teenagers and young adults with cancer worldwide every year. But after this life-saving procedure, the immune system must completely rebuild itself.
While some immune cells return to work within weeks, the body’s strongest infection-fighting immune cells, T-cells, remain mysteriously absent when they are needed the most.
Creating new T-cells is a delicate process that requires months of specialised development in a tiny organ called the thymus – a small gland in the upper chest.
During this vulnerable window, families enter a world of hand sanitiser, face masks, and strict vigilance. Parents are constantly worried that their child could develop a severe infection; a complication that strikes up to 30% of young transplant patients, and some prove fatal despite the most advanced medical care. For our youngest cancer patients, these challenges can lead to lifelong chronic health conditions and disabilities, requiring long-term management and care.
Prof Mark Dawson from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre has assembled a collaborative team, including clinician-scientists from the Royal Children’s Hospital and the Royal Melbourne Hospital, to work on improving T-cell recovery after a stem cell transplant, having received $868,000 from the Children’s Cancer Foundation and the State Government via Children’s Cancer CoLab to fast-track their research.
Using technology that allows the researchers to track how stem cells change in real-time, they discovered a novel gene that acts like a turbo button for T-cell production.
Prof Dawson explained that when this gene is unlocked, the body’s T-cells are rapidly generated.
It’s like finding the missing page in an instruction manual. Suddenly, the body knows exactly how to fast-track its most important defenders after a stem cell transplant… Finding a reliable approach to enhance recovery after a transplant holds the promise of saving the lives of thousands of children and young adults across the world. We are absolutely determined and dedicated to this task.
Advancing knowledge to create a new therapy
Prof Dawson’s team is world-renowned in novel drug development and advanced technologies; here they will develop the application of mRNA and lipid nanoparticle platforms. The technical strength of the team, combined with insights from clinician-scientists in paediatric oncology, ensures that the project will directly benefit childhood cancer patients undergoing bone marrow transplants, and potentially in other clinical settings.
The project is racing toward two critical goals:
Supporting safer therapies to help children recover faster
Co-Chair of Children’s Cancer CoLab’s Scientific Advisory Committee and Board Director, Prof Andrew Wilks, said Prof Dawson’s research could lead to a safer therapy that transforms recovery for children who have had an HSCT.
We are excited to support Prof Dawson’s project as it has the potential to reduce the lifelong toxic impacts of stem cell transplants, something we know can occur in infants and toddlers who are also going through key development stages
The project, which is part of Children’s Cancer CoLab’s Safer Therapies Impact Program, is supported by the Children’s Cancer Foundation and runs until July 2027.
Children’s Cancer Foundation CEO, Margaret Fitzherbert, said supporting safer therapy research through Children’s Cancer CoLab was a priority for the Foundation.
For the thousands of families facing stem cell transplants each year, this research offers hope for a safer, kinder therapy that speeds up recovery times so that children can return to enjoying their childhood instead of being in a hospital isolation ward.
The Children’s Cancer Foundation is committed to raising $10 million over the next five years to fund the critical work of Children’s Cancer CoLab. Learn more about our joint vision to ensure children with cancer survive and thrive here.
Grant Awarded: $868,000
Project Timeline: August 2025 – July 2027
Impact Programs: Safer Therapies
Scientific Review: Children’s Cancer CoLab Scientific Advisory Committee
Lead Institution: Peter MaCallum Cancer Centre
Collaborating Institutions: University of Melbourne, Royal Children’s Hospital and Royal Melbourne Hospital
Lead Researcher: Prof Mark Dawson
Collaborating to end the dangerous waiting game after a stem cell transplant© 2025 by Children’s Cancer CoLab adapted for Children’s Cancer Foundation. Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0. Changes were made to the original.
Copyright 2025 Children's Cancer Foundation
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