The 2018 recipient of the Raine Research Prize was Dr Samuel Taylor, previously from The University of Western Australia, for his article entitled “Preventing chemotherapy-induced myelosuppression by repurposing the FLT3 inhibitor quizartinib” published in Science Translational Medicine (Taylor et al., Sci Transl Med. 2017; 9: eaam8060).

Dr Taylor’s research aims to characterise novel treatments to prevent myelosuppression during cancer therapy (particularly leukemia), using chemistry sequencing approaches. This approach aims to improve cancer patient survival and quality of life. The Raine Research Prize provided Dr Taylor with the opportunity to attend two conferences during the first year of his postdoctoral position at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AECOM), New York. The first conference was the American Society for Haematology (ASH) conference held in Atlanta, USA in December 2017, where Dr Taylor networked with many research leaders in the fields of leukaemia and haematology research as well as met with collaborators from Georgia State University (GSU) to establish the outline of his postdoctoral project.

The travel funds provided by the Raine Foundation enabled Dr Taylor to meet face-to-face and build a good working relationship with his collaborators from GSU including Dr Poon, Dr Boykin and Dr Wilson, who
are all highly experienced chemists and biochemists, and who will be synthesising the compounds that Dr Taylor will be examining throughout his project. This collaboration has also led to Dr Taylor successfully receiving a postdoctoral fellowship for the remainder of his postdoctoral tenure at AECOM.

Dr Taylor also attended the New Directions in Leukaemia Research Conference held in Brisbane in 2018, which brings together both national and international scientists nd clinicians in haematology and leukaemia research. Dr Taylor had the opportunity to meet with Dr Mark Dawson, from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, who is now a collaborator on his postdoctoral project. The meeting with Dr Mark Dawson also led to him being a co-supervisor for a fellowship application by Dr Taylor, which was awarded in 2018. These connections were essential for Dr Taylor to be successfully awarded three fellowships, of which he accepted only the NYSCF Druckenmiller Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Dr Samuel Taylor and Dr Luis Carvajal at the American Society for Haematology Conference in Atlanta.