Charlie Stevens was only 17 months when he was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML).

After a heroic fight, Charlie passed away aged just three. In the wake of this devastation, his mother Kelly Stevens knew she didn’t want another family to go through the same gut-wrenching experience.

With a strong belief that the only way to improve outcomes for children with similar conditions to Charlie’s is through research, Kelly established Charlie’s Rainbow and began a series of initiatives fundraising for paediatric cancer research at UniSA.

The $150,000 raised in 2022 supported full-time researcher Saumya Samaraweera, a member of Prof. Richard D’Andrea’s research group, the Acute Leukaemia Laboratory.

“Saumya has had a very important role in progressing several projects and collaborations, including our research into an immunotherapy approach for childhood AML as well as the collaboration with the ZERO Childhood Cancer group in Sydney, which is looking at the child's inherited DNA changes and how to integrate this into treatment decisions,” says Prof. D’Andrea. “Saumya's presentation at the ZERO Childhood Cancer Symposium in Sydney in October was very well received and we are now writing a major grant application with this Sydney group.”

The successful Charlie’s Rainbow MOVE Challenge returned in 2023 and 2024, providing solid evidence for a grant application that the research by Prof Richard D’Andrea’s team has strong community support.

“We are so blessed to have such a supportive network of families, friends and fellow oncology families who have been touched by cancer in one way or another.”
Kelly Stevens

“My family and I are determined to make a difference for our precious Charlie [pictured left], our friends’ children who have lost their lives to AML and those still fighting.”