Dr Karin Straathof receives Sparks Early Career Investigator Award

Dr Karin Straathof has been awarded the prestigious Sparks Simon Newell Early Career Investigator award in recognition of her outstanding work focused on understanding and harnessing the power of the immune system in treatment of childhood cancer.

Dr Straathof is a Wellcome Trust Clinician Scientist and reader in paediatric immunology at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) and the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health (ICH).

Nominated by Professor Rosalind Smyth, Director of ICH, and described as an outstanding force of nature, Dr Straathof has had a steep career trajectory. The central theme in her research is understanding how T-cells, key cells in our immune system, can be altered, ‘engineered’ and used as a treatment to hunt down and destroy childhood cancers. Dr Straathof played a vital role in getting a clinical trial using engineered patient T-cells off the ground for children with neuroblastoma. Neuroblastoma is a rare cancer that affects children, mostly under the age of five. Around 100 children are diagnosed with the condition each year in the UK and it can be challenging to treat. This clinical study, which is currently ongoing, will provide important information on how modified T-cells can be used to treat so-called ‘solid’ tumours and not just blood cancers.

Her aim is to develop this new type of treatment for several childhood tumours that are currently difficult to cure. To achieve this Dr Straathof, with collaborators at UCL and internationally, has developed lab models to test these kinds of treatments and select the optimal ones for translation into clinical trials for the children who need them.

Dr Straathof’s most recent work has focused on using these T-cell therapies to treat a rare, extremely aggressive and hard-to-treat type of brain tumour called Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG). Her ambitions are to introduce this into clinical trials as soon as possible, building on her overall goal to find cures for cancer without the side-effects currently experienced with current treatments.

Since 1999 this prestigious award has been funded by Sparks (now part of the Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity Family) along with the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) to recognise excellence in child health research. This annual honour is open to outstanding clinician researchers early on in their academic career.

The award is named in memory of Dr Simon Newell in recognition of his tremendous contribution to child health research. Simon was a renowned and widely respected neonatologist and paediatrician who had a passion for encouraging the next generation of paediatric clinicians and researchers. He was connected to Sparks throughout his career, first as a researcher, then as a member of the Medical Advisory Committee, and later as a Trustee.