A historic $25 million has been announced for a research program that’s aiming to halve deaths from breast cancer.
The ground-breaking research, led by Associate Professor Christine Chaffer at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, will focus on stopping breast cancer returning after a period of remission.
The National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF), which is making the historic investment through its Collaborative Research Accelerator Grant that provides up to $25 million over five years, says the disease kills more than 3,000 Australians every year.
And more than 21,000 are diagnosed with breast cancer annually.
Researchers say one of the devastating outcomes for people who survive it is that it can come back within 10 years.
This is because breast cancer cells can hide in the body, most commonly in bone.
Dr Chaffer says she and the team working on the ‘AllClear’ research program will be tackling one of the most complex and urgent challenges in the field by looking into why this happens.
“AllClear brings unprecedented collaboration to identify these ‘seeds’ of relapse early,” she says.
“This will allow us to develop the world’s first and largest biobank of primary breast tumours paired with corresponding bone samples, collected at multiple stages throughout the course of the disease.
“This research will let us develop tools to predict who is most at risk of relapse, and develop targeted therapies to eliminate these seeds of relapse, before they reawaken and cause metastatic breast cancer.”
Dr Chaffer and her team will closely study cancer cells in the bone to figure out how they hide.
They will also look at how these cells differ to those in the primary tumours.
In addition to this, they’ll be exploring why current treatments fail.
Fellow researcher, Professor Peter Croucher, says this research could transform breast cancer treatment.
“We have developed a method that allows us – for the first time – to find, isolate and study the rare, dormant cancer cells from the bones of people with breast cancer,” he says.
“Studying these ‘seeds’ of relapse will allow us to understand what is driving recurrence, which could transform how breast cancer is understood and treated and also help us understand other cancers, giving hope to more people.”
The research will be run in collaboration with Garvan and nearly 60 researchers across multiple organisations including hospitals, universities and other institutes.
NBCF CEO Dr Cleola Anderiesz says the grant marks a “significant leap forward” for breast cancer research.
“By bringing together the brightest minds from Australia and around the world, we’re tackling one of the greatest challenges – stopping breast cancer recurrence,” she says.
“This $25 million investment is a strategic enabler of long-term research, high-impact research. It empowers collaboration at scale, drives innovation, and accelerates progress toward the National Breast Cancer Foundation’s vision of zero deaths from breast cancer.”