About cancer research grants

ACRF recently announced its latest cancer research grants for the current year, totalling $9 million in funding for three major breakthrough projects.

Our grants are directed at creating the infrastructure, such as buildings and equipment, to enable critical research at Australia’s most promising research institutes and universities.

Frequently the ACRF provides the ‘seed’ funding to establish major specialist laboratories, like St. Vincent’s Hospital’s Centre for Immunology and Westmead Hospital’s new cancer research laboratories.

Similarly, the University of Queensland received $1 million from the ACRF to build their Centre for Immunology where the final phase clinical trials on the vaccine to prevent cervical cancer were conducted.

Ultimately, the work at centres funded by ACRF are delivering real benefits to the one in three Australians who will be diagnosed with cancer. However, major hurdles still remain and you can help.

This year, more than 82,000 new cases of cancer will be diagnosed in Australia and we continue to search for better treatments for two of the most widespread cancers – lung cancer and bowel cancer – and ways to treat other cancers with a poor prognosis, like pancreatic and oesophageal cancer.

World-impacting results

Absolute breakthroughs are rare in cancer research, but as a cancer research charity the ACRF is often at the forefront of innovative results because we encourage researchers to go for the big results:

Cancer Research Projects & Grant Recipients

Research Grants Application Process

The breakthrough vaccine to treat and prevent cervical cancer, discovered by Professor Ian Frazer, Australian of the Year, was kick-started in 1999 by a grant from the ACRF when other funding avenues had been exhausted.

In October 2007 Professor Philip Hogg announced work on an agent to prove whether chemotherapy drugs are actually working. The agent was synthesised at the NSW University ACRF Drug Development Laboratory, funded by the Foundation.

In 2008, Professor Michael Parker at St Vincent’s Institute Melbourne and Professor Angel Lopez at Adelaide’s Hanson Institute discovered a leukemia receptor that will lead to drugs to treat and cure leukemia.

In the last six years alone, donations from generous Australian individuals and corporations have allowed this Foundation to fund $53 million in Australian cancer research projects which work at the very core of the disease producing real breakthroughs and more effective treatments, prevention and diagnosis.

ACRF funding has made a real difference to the quality of life to patients with cancer, supporting the discovery of new ways to detect and treat the various cancers. This, in turn, has helped to improve cancer survival rates and provide a clearer understanding of the characteristics that cause cells to become cancerous.

Cancer research funded through the Foundation includes: