You study childhood leukaemia – how has treatment changed in recent times?
Over the last few decades, the treatments for childhood leukaemia have improved. In the 1960s, hardly any children who were diagnosed survived the disease. We have gone from that to today, where survival rates are in the order of 90 per cent. This has mostly been due to better tailoring of treatments and improved supportive care, but we are now using more precise approaches like immune therapies.
And what does your research aim to do?
We want to make cancer treatments less toxic for children with leukaemia, while still being effective. And there remain some types of leukaemia that are harder to treat, survival rates are lower, so we want to find better ways of treating them.
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How are you doing that?
We are analysing blood cancers from a few different angles, using a combination of computational approaches, laboratory experiments and testing new treatments directly in preclinical models. Our institute in UCD, Systems Biology Ireland (SBI), has particular expertise in artificial intelligence (AI) methods, and we use this to fast-track our research work.
You trained as a doctor, when did you develop an interest in research?
I did my medical degree at Trinity College Dublin and specialised as a haematologist in Ireland, then I moved to England and France to train as an academic clinician in haematology. While I was working on the wards, I saw that all major improvements in patient care came directly from research. I wanted to contribute to these efforts and to bring new scientific discoveries to the clinic as quickly as possible.
When did you return to Ireland?
I came back to Dublin in 2018 to take up the Brendan McGonnell Professorship of Paediatric Molecular Haemato-Oncology at UCD and to lead a programme on academic research in childhood leukaemia. This was set up by a legacy donation to the Children’s Health Foundation charity.
What are you working on now?
Lots of different things. One thing we’re particularly excited about is a project called ALLTogether Team Science with partners from seven other countries. It is focused on T-ALL, a leukaemia that can be hard to treat in children. At SBI, we are analysing the leukaemia protein profiles from all the samples across Europe, and will be using AI to untangle all the genomic and molecular analysis to find novel treatment avenues.
How will your research make a difference?
In general, for all the childhood leukaemia research we do in UCD, we’re closely linked to the clinic in Ireland and further afield as part of European clinical trials, so are well placed to bring any new findings to patients. I am also a researcher in Precision Oncology Ireland, and we are starting a project with Children’s Health Ireland called MAGIC-I, which stands for “Molecular and Genomic Interrogation of Childhood Cancer – Ireland”.
It’s a five-year philanthropy-funded programme to put in place the processes to do deep genomic analysis for all childhood cancer patients in Ireland, not just the blood cancers. So we will look at the DNA of an individual person’s cancer cells, and use that information to identify the treatments that will be the least toxic for the patient while being effective.
How do you take a break from work?
Most of my downtime is taken up with reading and sports – playing badly and watching avidly. We were very lucky to go to the Olympics this summer – this was fantastic. I can also be found most weeks in the stands at Leinster rugby matches, shouting helpful advice to the players and referee.
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