Cancer Council Australia has welcomed an audit of Australian cancer research funding published today (24/9), showing the nation’s overall investment has doubled over the past eight years, with a modest relative increase in funds for cancers causing high death rates.
Cancer Research in Australia, released by the Australian Government agency Cancer Australia, found that a total of $1.3 billion in cancer research was funded between 2003 and 2011, including a three-fold increase in tumour-specific projects over that time.
Cancer Council Australia CEO, Professor Ian Olver, said that while the relative funding of research into tumours that caused high death rates had increased, the trend needed to continue.
“The trend towards a relative increase in funding for research into cancers that are particularly difficult to treat, such as lung cancer, is encouraging,” he said.
“We need to continue and accelerate that trend, even though difficult-to-treat cancers pose the greatest challenges to researchers.”
Professor Olver said the report also showed that the overall investment in cancer prevention research across all sectors was only 2%, demonstrating the importance of supporting nongovernment and not-for-profit organisations, which led work in areas such as skin cancer prevention.
“A lot of prevention science and research in areas such as survivorship and patient support has no commercial application, so it is important to have a strong not-for-profit sector driving that research,” he said.
In 2014, Cancer Councils and their research partners invested more than $65 million into around 300 research initiatives, including research projects, fellowships and research centres.
Source: Cancer Council Australia
Ryan Fritz
Ryan Fritz started The Advocate in 2014 to provide not-for-profits and charities another media platform to tell their worthwhile hard news stories and opinion pieces effortlessly. In 2020, Ryan formed a team of volunteer journalists to help spread even more high-quality stories from the third sector. He also has over 10 years experience as a media and communications professional for not-for-profits and charities and currently works at Redkite, a childhood cancer charity.
