A combination therapy against childhood bone cancer is efficient in living organisms: if the tumor is transplanted into fish larvae and treated with certain drugs, it shrinks significantly or disappears completely. However, the journey will still take a while before these drugs can be applied in children, say Martin Distel, PhD, from St. Anna Children's Cancer Research Institute and co-authors. The results were published in the journal Cancer Letters.

🎗February 15 is International Childhood Cancer Day. This day stands for the challenges in combating childhood cancer and is a reminder to raise awareness for this devastating disesae.

Dr. Eleni Tomazou, Principal Investigator at St. Anna Children’s Cancer Research Institute (CCRI), wins one of the very hard to get Consolidator Grants of the European Research Council (ERC).

 Congratulations! For the first time, a young researcher at St. Anna CCRI, Cheryl van de Wetering, PhD, has received a fellowship for outstanding young scientists from the Peter and Traudl Engelhorn Foundation.

Congratulations to Kaan Boztug and Irinka Castanon on two new Stand Alone projects funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF on the topic of rare diseases of the immune system.

A study in collaboration with St. Anna CCRI shows that stem cell transplantation does not provide any advantage over chemotherapy in a specific form of leukemia.

St. Anna Children's Cancer Research Institute and its collaboration partner CeMM receive funding for a project aimed at providing tailored treatments for a type of childhood leukemia not adequately addressed by current therapy.

Prof. Christina Peters, MD, from St. Anna Children’s Hospital and St. Anna CCRI presents new data showing a dire need for immunotherapy strategies tackling high-risk childhood leukemia at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH). Other updates from the same study (FORUM) confirm the superiority of total body irradiation prior to stem cell transplantation and the use of transplants from matched unrelated donors in children under the age of four with high-risk acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

How adult drugs from the group of MAP kinase inhibitors can also be used in children with cancer in a standardized manner worldwide has now been outlined in a statement in the renowned European Journal of Cancer. The authors of this review are stakeholders from all relevant fields, including Caroline Hutter, MD, PhD, scientist at St. Anna Children's Cancer Research Institute, clinician at St. Anna Children's Hospital and expert in the rare pediatric cancer Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH). Her goal is to test the most effective and tolerable MAP kinase inhibitor in a clinical trial, thus enabling rapid market approval and availability for children.

On hot track! Davide Seruggia and Ana Kutschat focus on new epigenetic factors associated with risk of developing childhood leukemia.

This year, all three prizes, as well as the "best abstract of the conference" go to St. Anna Children's Cancer Research Institute (St. Anna CCRI) and St. Anna Children's Hospital!

…and the ÖGMBT Best Talk Award goes to: Eva König!

Socializing, getting further education and screening job offers: This year's Life Science Career Fair of the ÖGMBT offered a wide range of opportunities for students and graduates.