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2025 Foundation Grant recipients: supporting 26 promising new projects

2 min read 06 October 2025

The Peter Mac Foundation is delighted to announce that 26 innovative research projects have been awarded Foundation Grants in 2025, funded by the generosity of donors to the Peter Mac Endowment Fund.

The Foundation Grants program supports new research projects that improve research knowledge, cancer treatment and patient outcomes. The program is designed to uplift the ideas of researchers who require an initial funding boost for their projects.  

This year, a total of $1.4m has been awarded across these promising new projects. With the support from this funding, grant recipients can explore and establish new ways of advancing cancer treatment and care.

Last year, the Foundation launched the Excellence in Innovation Awards for grant recipients who received the highest scores throughout the peer-reviewed assessment process. In 2025, the awardees are Ms Holly Chung, Dr Joan So, and Ms Megan Sanders.

Congratulations to the 2025 Foundation Grant recipients:

Rebecca Abbott – A peek behind the curtain: A product enabling tracking of expansion and trafficking of anti-cancer cell therapies in real time.

Katherine Audsley – Deciphering T cell-dendritic cell crosstalk to identify novel immune checkpoint targets for solid cancers

Hayley Beer – Co-designing strategies to overcome barriers and strengthen enablers to implementation of nurse-enabled, subcutaneous therapy self-administration programs for patients with myeloma

Joshua Casan – Exploring the T cell lymphoma methylome: the foundations of a new classification model

David Chang – Best of Both (BOB) Trial: A Feasibility Study of Hybrid High Dose Rate Brachytherapy and Stereotactic Ablative Body Radiotherapy for Low and Intermediate Risk Prostate Cancer

Holly Chung – RGEDI Impact Assessment: A retrospective evaluation of Peter Mac’s Research Gender Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Initiatives (2014-2024)

Nick Clemons – Establishing a novel technique to identify progenitor cells and trace clonal relationships in human normal and premalignant oesophagus

Lara Edbrooke – Remotely delivered exercise prior to and following CAR T-cell therapy

Rae Farnsworth – Every move you make: detecting pre-metastatic vascular changes towards enhanced risk prediction.

Kylie Gorringe – A new treatment for ovarian cancer from an exceptional responder

Fayrouz Hammal – Uncovering the Role of Transposable Elements in Melanoma Progression and Therapy Response Using Long-Read Sequencing

Wenxin Hu – Development of prime-editing saturation mutagenesis screens for comprehensive characterisation of drug resistance mutations in tumour drivers

Yu-Kuan (Tony) Huang – To improve Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cell therapy in solid tumour with small peptide vaccines

Nicole Kinnane – Redesigning approaches to follow-up care for women with endometrial cancer: A data linkage study

Sandeep Kusre – Value for Money? Health Economic Evaluation of the First Oncology Enhanced Care Unit (ECU) in Australia

Michael MacManus – Reducing radiation-induced haematological toxicities post-radiation therapy treatment

Christopher McCormack – Automated Melanoma Detection Using Artificial Intelligence for Rapid and Advanced Biopsy Analysis

Conor McGuinness – Investigating synergy between hormone replacement therapies and genomic variants in breast cancer risk

Ebtihal Mustafa – Establishing the role of extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) in the development of oesophageal cancer

Jane Oliaro – Development of a novel nanobody-secreting CAR-T cell for the treatment of multiple myeloma

Katie Owen – Developing a new class of nanobody-based theranostics for lethal cancer treatment

Megan Sanders – The FEasibility, Acceptability and Safety of blended Tube feeding in head and neck cancer patients undergoing radiotherapy (FEAST) – a feasibility study

Joan So – Decoding the cellular and molecular properties of the tumour microenvironment in bone marrow

Mary Jane Tsang Mui Ching – Reprogramming RNA processing to control MYC transcript stability for cancer therapy

Marit Van Elsas – Assessing the potential of CAR-macrophages and monocytes using in vivo lipid nanoparticle delivery of CAR mRNA to treat colorectal peritoneal metastasis – A proof-of-concept study

Katrina Woodford – Reducing the Burden of Palliative Radiation Therapy for Children with Cancer Through a Simulation-Free Pathway

The Peter Mac Foundation sincerely thanks our wonderful Endowment Fund donors, whose generosity allows researchers to improve the detection, treatment and care of people with cancer.

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We are delighted to share with you the new Peter Mac Foundation’s strategy!  Every day, people affected by cancer face some of the toughest moments of their lives. Support from our incredible community helps make world-leading research, innovative treatments and compassionate care possible.  Our new strategy sets forward how your generosity will continue to make a real difference for patients and families, today and into the future. By working closely with Peter Mac, we’re ensuring your support drives the breakthroughs that matter most.  Together, we’re helping shape the future of cancer care and research – and creating hope where it’s needed most. Thank you for being part of this journey.  To read our new strategy, head to the link in bio.
This World Cancer Day 2026, we are United by Unique. We often hear from our incredible community of Peter Mac supporters about their personal journeys with cancer. And every story we hear reminds us that no two cancer journeys are the same. These stories show us why research into personalised cancer care is so vital. Cancer doesn’t affect people in one way, and the best treatment recognises and responds to each person’s uniqueness. That’s why Peter Mac’s researchers are developing therapies shaped by each person’s needs, keeping people at the heart of all we do. Today, we recognise all Peter Mac supporters and the many different experiences and motivations that unite them. Thank you for helping advance cancer treatment and care shaped around each individual.
What if we could see exactly how cancer behaves once it reaches the bone? New research can help us map what happens next and develop better treatments for advanced cancer. When cancer spreads to the bone, it can cause serious complications and become incurable. This is particularly common in hormone-driven cancers like breast and prostate cancer. Interestingly, although many cancer cells can enter the bone, only a small number will aggressively spread. This process, often taking months or years, suggests the bone marrow environment plays a key role in keeping cancer cells dormant or triggering ‘bone metastases’. But bone tissue is extremely difficult to study, making it hard for researchers to understand how this spread occurs. Because of this, there are currently no effective treatments for bone metastases. Dr Joan So was recently awarded a Peter Mac Foundation grant to help overcome this challenge. With grant funding, Dr So will use samples from breast cancer patients who have suffered bone metastases to study how cancer cells interact with the surrounding cell types in the bone marrow. Using cutting edge technology to see which genes are active in individual cells and how these cells behave in bone tissue, Dr So will generate a detailed “Google Map” of breast cancer that’s moved to the bone. This will help to identify which cells and molecular pathways influence the switch between dormant and growing cancer. The potential insights from Dr So’s work may open a new world of research opportunities and reveal new approaches for treating cancer that has spread to the bone. Thank you for supporting work that provides hope to people facing advanced cancer.
As another year draws to a close, the Peter MacCallum Cancer Foundation thanks our amazing supporters for your outstanding generosity this year. In 2025, your support has allowed lifesaving cancer research at Peter Mac to grow and thrive. Whether it was donating, leaving a gift in will, volunteering, running a marathon, rallying the community or sharing your story – you have all played a vital role in shaping a brighter for people affected by cancer. On behalf of Peter Mac researchers, clinicians and all people affected by cancer: thank you sincerely for your amazing support in 2025. Wishing you all a happy and healthy 2026.
“Big thanks to everyone who’s donated to Peter Mac research this Christmas. Your support means we can make greater discoveries to help cancer patients all over the world.” – A message from Associate Professor Ben Tran, Medical Oncologist at Peter Mac. Read more about Ben's work here: foundation.petermac.org/ben_christmas
Finding a ‘peek behind the curtain’ for CAR T-cell therapies may be the answer to new ways of treating solid cancer tumours. CAR T-cell therapy has been a game-changer in treating blood cancers. Patient immune cells are modified to recognise cancer cells and attack them. Unfortunately, it has not been as successful in treating solid tumours. One potential reason is that not enough of the immune cells travel to the tumour to be effective. There is currently no method for locating and tracking these cells in real-time, making it hard to understand why CAR T-cell therapy is largely ineffective at treating solid tumours. With the support of a Peter Mac Foundation Grant, Dr Rebecca Abbott is exploring if a molecule called a ‘tracer’ can be used to watch CAR T-cell therapy in action. This could potentially be a powerful tool in providing insights on why CAR T-cell therapy often doesn’t work in solid tumours, and how we can design CAR T-cells which are more effective. Dr Abbott’s research can help to change the course for CAR T-cell therapy and expand treatment options across more cancer types. Thank you for supporting groundbreaking research that helps people with all cancers.
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