Foundation Grants awarded to 26 innovative new cancer research projects at Peter Mac
10 October 2023
We're delighted to announce that 26 new and novel cancer research projects at Peter Mac have been awarded Foundation Grants of up to $55,000 each, thanks to the generosity of our wonderful donors.
Each year the Peter MacCallum Cancer Foundation allocates philanthropic funds to promising new initiatives through the Foundation Grants program. This year, a total of $1.348 million will provide seed funding for 26 cancer research projects, currently in the early stages of development.
Selected through rigorous peer review, and assessed for scientific merit and compatibility with Peter Mac’s Strategic Directions, the winning projects are amongst the boldest and most innovative research proposals, each with the potential to enable major advances in our understanding of how best to fight cancer.
The Foundation Grants program is made possible by members of the Foundation's Endowment Fund – a small but powerful group of donors with the vision to help us rapidly accelerate the pace of discovery in cancer. Together, they have enabled Peter Mac to kickstart over 260 new research projects in the last 20 years.
Congratulations to 2023's Foundation Grant recipients:
Suad Abdirahman
Understanding therapy resistance in mucinous ovarian cancer
Shaza Abo
Measuring muscle mass using point of care ultrasound with embedded artificial intelligence in patients following bone marrow transplant: a nested exploratory study within a randomised control trial
Yuchen Bai
Promoting cell proliferation to block the invasion of head and neck cancer cells
Jesse Balic
Towards identifying therapeutic targets of graft-versus-host disease
Paul Beavis
Combining mRNA vaccines with CAR T cells for the effective treatment of solid tumours
Stephanie Best
Guiding the adaptation and fidelity of clinical innovations for scaling up across cancer care services: the Fidelity and Adaptation for Cancer Treatment when Scaling up “FACTS” tool
Sarat Chander
A Prospective Single-Arm Study of Partially Ablative Body Radiotherapy (PABR) for the Palliation of Bulky Tumours
Dane Cheasley
The diagnostic prospects of urine exosomes for women with low-grade serous ovarian carcinoma
Elizabeth Crone
Missed Nursing Care: Generating real world data to enhance quality and safety of care
Jennifer Devlin
Redeveloping a high-throughput RNA transcript screen for regulators of CDK-dependent transcription in cancer
Qian Dong
Targeting the blood-brain barrier transporters in brain cancer
Allison Drosdowsky
Development of a Health Services Research Impact Assessment Tool
Laura Forrest
Assessing the acceptability of a breast and ovarian cancer precision prevention intervention to stakeholders including general practitioners, genetic counsellors, and young women
Nicholas Hardcastle
Artificial intelligence driven anatomical modelling to enable longitudinal analysis in cancer imaging
Susan Harden
SABR One Stop Service for Lung Cancer
Safeera Hussainy
Let’s talk about sex: Co-designing a sexuality clinic at Peter Mac
Kun-Hui Lu
Enhancing B Cell Memory and Vaccination Efficacy by Repurposing CDK4/6 Inhibitors
Jovana Maksimovic
Evaluating new technology to improve single-cell analysis of leukaemia
Julia Milne
Establishing a genetically editable organoid system to model oesophageal tumourigenesis
Vanessa Panettieri
Next-generation radiation therapy treatment planning with artificial intelligence
Kathleen Irene Pishas
Interrogating the cell surface proteome to identify new therapeutic options for BRCA reverted High Grade Serous Ovarian Carcinomas
Gemma Reynolds
ACCELERATE - vACCination for hAEmatology patiEnts tReated with cellulAr therapies
Teresa Sadras
Towards preventing CD19 negative relapse by forcing antigen dependency
Janith Seneviratne
Discovering novel therapies that target non-small cell lung cancer lineage plasticity
Alison Trainer & Stephen Luen
Bringing patient-centred informed consent for tumour genomic profiling into the 21st century.
Leon Worth
Surveillance of Immune-Related Colitis using Artificial intelligence (SIRCA)