Glenn Marshall: lynchpin for research in paediatric cancer.

Glenn Marshall's training in paediatric oncology came at a time of great optimism when technology, treatments, and cure rates were all improving. But softer skills also drew him into the specialty. " I'm very much a humanist, and had the privilege of working with mentors who could think scientifi cally about their clinical work, but also see the intensely human side of clinical care, dealing particularly with the tremendous strain that parents of children with cancer go through " , says Marshall, who is Head of Translational Research and Molecular Carcinogenesis for the Children's Cancer Institute Australia at the Lowy Cancer Centre in Sydney and Director of the Kids Cancer Centre at the Sydney Children's Hospital. During his training at the Children's Hospital Los Angeles and the University of Southern California, under virologist and cancer biologist Peter Vogt, Marshall undertook experimental work with a team of dedicated postdocs on the newly discovered Jun oncogene. He then returned to Sydney, in 1992, at a time when the Children's Cancer Institute Australia was beginning to grow, and where he would become part of a highly successful triumvirate with fellow researchers Murray Norris and Michelle Haber. " We were doing translational work long before it became as popular as it is today " , notes Marshall, who still spends up to half of his time in the lab. " As a clinician-scientist you need to be able to recognise a problem at the bedside, take it to the laboratory bench either yourself or with others, and, then hopefully armed with a solution back to the bedside. " Marshall and his colleagues' work for the institute has seen it become an epicentre for paediatric cancer research. " Along with Michelle Haber and Murray Norris, Glenn Marshall has made the Children's Cancer Institute Australia one of the premier children cancer research translational centres globally " , says Andrew Pearson, from Cancer Research UK and a Professor of Paediatric Oncology at the Institute of Cancer Research and the UK's Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. One of the projects that Marshall, Norris, and Haber have focused on is minimal residual disease (MRD) testing in children with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. They have pioneered the use of MRD testing to predict the risk of subsequent relapse of leukaemia in patients in apparent remission. " After identifying these children at high risk of relapse, we gave them more intense treatment, …