We are delighted to announce that Fatimah Jalud has been awarded a Leukaemia Foundation PhD Scholarship. Only a few Leukaemia Foundation PhD scholarships are awarded to researchers each year, supporting the importance of Fatimah’s research project.
Fatimah is a Senior Research Assistant in the Leukaemia Biology and Functional Genomics Laboratory led by Dr Teresa Sadras at the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute (ONJCRI).
Supporting the next generation of blood cancer researchers, the Scholarship will allow Fatimah to advance her work in blood cancer and identify new insights on relapses in childhood leukaemia.
Fatimah explains her research focus:
“My research aims to develop a deeper understanding of why some KMT2A-rearranged B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) cells survive treatment and later drive relapse.
“This subtype remains particularly difficult to treat, especially in infants and young children, so my goal is to identify the cellular and genetic features that allow leukaemia cells to adapt under treatment pressure.”
ALL is a cancer type that affects the blood and bone marrow, where the bone marrow overproduces white blood cells.
The scholarship will enable Fatimah to research how existing treatments can create new therapeutic opportunities for this specific subset of paediatric ALL patients. Fatimah highlights the impact this grant will help her achieve:
“A major milestone will be to use patient samples and highly specific sequencing methods to understand how individual leukaemia cells change from diagnosis through treatment and relapse, and to identify the populations most likely to persist after therapy.
The Leukaemia Foundation PhD scholarship was made possible thanks to a generous donation by the Griffiths Family. Fatimah says:
“It provides the opportunity to pursue research in an area where there is still a significant unmet need. It is also deeply motivating to know that this work is supported by an organisation committed to improving the lives of people affected by blood cancer.”
Thank you to the Leukaemia Foundation for their continued support of the next generation of blood cancer researchers at ONJCRI.