The Kids Research Institute Australia: Trailblazing founders reflect on 35 years of medical breakthroughs

It was a meeting of minds when the four founders of The Kids Research Institute Australia reunited to mark 35 years of groundbreaking medical research. On Tuesday, founding chair Emeritus Professor Lou Landau, founding director Professor Fiona Stanley, and founding researchers Professor Wayne Thomas and Professor Steve Zubrick joined hundreds of staff at The Kids to reflect on the decades spent improving child health outcomes. Professor Stanley was the driving force behind the institute’s creation. She wanted to expand her epidemiological research and partner with clinical scientists and researchers to produce impactful paediatric research. Then a practising paediatrician, Professor Landau was having a similar epiphany, realising that WA needed its very own paediatric research institute. “I had just recently come from Victoria, I looked up who was involved actively in child health research in WA and Fiona Stanley’s name was very apparent. So I approached Fiona and asked about the idea of setting up a research institute,” he said. The pair recruited several researchers, including Professor Wayne Thomas and Professor Steve Zubrick. And the rest is history. From negotiating a peppercorn lease at the old nurses quarters at Princess Margaret Hospital in 1990, to the institute’s home at Perth Children’s Hospital today, it’s been a wild ride. “It’s amazing, really, because towards the end of the ‘80s, early ‘90s, research and child health was in a very different space, and anything we did was pioneering, which was very exciting,” Professor Stanley said. “People thought it was a bit crazy setting up an institute in those days. But in fact, it was the right thing at the right time. “I have to say, whilst it’s been a tough gig, it’s been absolutely brilliant. It’s just made my whole life just so enjoyable and so rewarding. “I could not have predicted when we set up our little institute of 80 people in 1990, with an old building being done up, that it could come to now 800 people in an incredible facility doing all this research.” Some of the institute’s breakthroughs have included unlocking the key to slowing the progress of childhood leukaemia, discovering that lung changes can be detected early in children with cystic fibrosis, developing national guidelines to assess autism, conducting clinical trials contributing to the licensing of more than 10 childhood vaccines — and many more. The support of the WA community, including Telethon, governments and corporate partners has funded these feats. “The reason why we could do it so well in WA is because we are intimately associated with the community. That’s unusual — you couldn’t have done it in the eastern States,” Professor Stanley said. “We just flew . . . and we tackled the most challenging problems, asthma, allergy, diabetes, cancers, suicide and mental health, birth defects and all of the developmental disorders. “We didn’t shy away from anything that was difficult. “We just got the best data we could and said, ‘how do we find out how to prevent these problems in kids? And if we can’t prevent them, how do we actually provide the best care?’” The founding four, each trailblazers in their own right, remain brimming with enthusiasm for the future of The Kids Research Institute, which is now in the capable hands of executive director Professor Jonathan Carapetis. “We’re built on this incredible 35-year foundation that Fiona Stanley, Lou Landau and others started, knowing that Western Australia needed research for the good of Western Australian kids,” Professor Carapetis said. “Thirty-five years has seen so many breakthroughs, such amazing science. But the thing that really stands this institute apart is that we don’t stop at a publication. “Our job is not done until it’s making a difference to the lives of kids, and that’s what makes me so proud.”