Visionary cancer research across Australia

DESPITE MANY ADVANCES in how we treat and manage cancer, it remains one of Australia’s leading causes of early death. The emergence of new technologies provides opportunities to advance cancer research like never before. Now more than ever, researchers need access to the latest equipment to accelerate towards a world without cancer.

Since 1984, through ACRF, donors have contributed over $174M to 82 pioneering cancer research projects across 43 institutions in Australia.

Past ACRF funding has a proven track record and has been used, for example, to:

• provide critical funding needed to fast track development of the cervical cancer vaccine

• create new medical devices for cancer imaging and targeted radiotherapy

• deploy CRISPR technology for gene editing (manipulate or repair gene function)

• establish robotics, libraries of known and clinically approved drugs, expanded tumour bank facilities and information management system to investigate new personalised cancer treatments for children diagnosed with high-risk cancer

• investigate early detection of lung cancer using specialised equipment for exhaled breath analysis

• significantly expand the capability of the Australian Synchrotron Micro Crystallography (MX2) beamline for enhanced protein analysis

• develop a library of information to advance scientific discovery and enhance clinical treatment worldwide. This database of tens of thousands of samples (of all types of cancer) will mean clinicians can effectively narrow down the best available treatment to target a cancer patient’s individual diagnosis, without having to waste time trialling medications.

Thanks to ACRF’s supporters, research discoveries and significant outcomes have already been made possible but there is still so much more work to be done.