Can Too Foundation is happy to announce a new research grant to Dr Narges Bayat at Children's Cancer Institute.
Advancing leukaemia care: a new imaging tool for early detection and treatment monitoring.
Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, a type of blood cancer, is the most common childhood cancer.
Early detection of relapse is crucial for improved survival.
Small amounts of residual disease in the bone marrow are the best indicator of relapse and poor outcomes as patients undergo treatment. However, monitoring residual disease currently involves repeated, highly invasive bone marrow biopsies to assess treatment response.
Dr Bayat’s project aims to develop an innovative, minimally invasive tool for detecting residual disease through imaging. This tool will integrate advanced magnetic particle imaging with targeted nanoparticles to visualise individual cancer cells in the bone marrow.
This minimally invasive approach could transform how treatment effectiveness is monitored. Dr Bayat hopes this pre-clinical imaging tool will enable the tracking of residual cancer cells for more accurate and earlier detection and accelerate the development of more effective treatments for high-risk leukaemia. ?
This project is supported by the CanToo Emerging Research Leader Program, an initiative of Can Too Foundation and Children’s Cancer Institute.

Dr Narges Bayat, pictured above.