About Cure

Cure Cancer Australia provides young and innovative researchers working in all areas of cancer with funding support at the start of their careers.

Since 1967 we have provided an essential link between the community and Australian research scientists.  Our aim is to fund more research grants each year, to enable our most promising young researchers to secure further funding, build on their ideas and continue their vital work in Australia.

Under the Chairmanship of Professor Martin Tattersall, Cure Cancer Australia’s Medical Grants Advisory Committee select projects which are the most credible and which will offer the greatest potential for ground breaking advances in cancer research.

The Foundation provides vital seed funding to researchers working in all areas of cancer, such as bowel, breast, brain, colorectal, lung, liver, pancreatic, prostate, skin and thyroid cancers as well as leukaemia & children’s cancers. Work in drug design, chemotherapy, radiotherapy as well as understanding cancer genetics has also received seed funding.

Cure Cancer Australia maximises funds raised to unleash fresh and inspiring minds. Research projects that show the highest merit are funded and money donated is distributed as grants directly to the researchers to specifically further their work.

The rewards of Cure Cancer Australia grants are seen in some of the country’s brightest researchers establishing themselves with independent research labs and successfully securing funding to continue their vital work.

Breakthroughs in Research

When Cure Cancer Australia Foundation began in 1967, if your doctor broke the news that you had Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia, he’d have told you there was no chance of survival.  It was a death sentence. Now, with the same diagnosis, you’d be told that you had a better than 75% chance of living a long and healthy life – thanks to a special research project supported by Cure Cancer Australia Foundation.  With the Foundation’s help, Professor James Biggs was able to develop the highly successful Bone Marrow Transplant Unit at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital.  The unit quickly established itself as one of the world leaders in this field of research and treatment.

The diagnosis of Thyroid Cancer no longer requires dangerous invasive surgery. The Foundation’s support enabled Dr Carolyn Mountford at Royal North Shore Hospital to devise the means to diagnose this disease by using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).  Dr Mountford is now the world leader in this innovative field and has applied this methodology to the early non-invasive diagnosis of many other cancers.
Early diagnosis and long term survival are very often synonymous in cancer.

Bladder Cancer is a particularly vicious disease that kills many Australians each year.  It is hard to detect and confirm before it sends out its deadly metastases to form cancers in other parts of the body.  A groundbreaking 1999 Cure Cancer Australia Foundation research project conducted by Dr Paul Jackson at the Prince of Wales Hospital Oncology Research Centre found the long sought-after trigger mechanism that turns a healthy bladder cell into a malignant cell.  With that knowledge, new treatments may now be devised to stop bladder cancer in its tracks.

There is no limit to what our innovative researchers can do, with your help.

Thanks to the generosity of the community, our mission is possible:  to find a cure by supporting young scientists to deliver breakthrough cancer research.

Cure Cancer Australia is a charity. Our principal activity is to promote the prevention or the control of cancer, and we do this by funding cancer research. Net proceeds of all card sales, e-cards and donations are directed towards cancer research.