$12m in funding to improve cancer research, treatment

Cancer Institute NSW has announced $12 million in grants funding, supporting 20 projects that are set to improve the lives of cancer patients across the state.

The centrepiece is a $3.75 million Translational Program Grant, helping Professor Lisa Horvath and her team at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research continue to integrate prostate cancer research into clinical practice over the next five years. It is hoped that the funding will not only help better target treatments for the disease, but ultimately reduce deaths from prostate cancer — the second-biggest cancer killer in men after lung cancer.

Prostate cancer is also the cancer most likely to lead to unnecessary treatment, but Professor Horvath and her team are hoping to change this. The grant will help develop improved imaging techniques to better determine which early-stage prostate cancers will become life-threatening and need aggressive treatments.

In addition, more than $6.5 million of the newly announced funding will support cancer researchers in the early stages of their careers. The Early Career Fellowships are intended to ensure NSW attracts and retains the best researchers, supporting collaboration between researchers, clinicians and the community.

For example, Dr Mengna Chi at the University of Newcastle has received $600,000 to investigate whether medicinal cannabis (low tetrahydrocannabinol hemp) is an effective new therapeutic for acute myeloid leukaemia. Another $600,000 has gone to the Garvan Institute’s Dr David Herrmann, who aims to improve outcomes for people with breast cancer by determining and blocking early events of cancer invasiveness.

A further $1.9 million has been put towards Career Development Fellowships — two at the Garvan Institute and four at the University of Sydney.

For the full list of 2018 Career Support Grants, visit the Cancer Institute NSW website.

Image credit: ©iStockphoto.com/David Gunn