You'll be helping save lives
Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer amongst women in Australia.
In the last 10 years, breast cancer diagnoses in Australia have increased by 24%. Each day 58 people in Australia are diagnosed with breast cancer and 9 people a day are dying from the disease. Funding world-class breast cancer research is more important than ever if we want to change the outcomes.
But hope is on the horizon.
The National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF) is committed to funding research to reach one determined vision - Zero Deaths from breast cancer.
Who you're helping fund
By taking part in GO PINK and raising funds for NBCF, you're funding world-class breast cancer research focused on better understanding how to prevent and detect breast cancer early, how to stop the progression and recurrence of breast cancer and how to effectively treat hard-to-treat and metastatic breast cancers - research that ultimately saves lives. The more we raise, the more research we can fund.
Here are just a few of the inspiring research projects underway.
Professor Laura Mackay
Resident memory T cells as targets for breast cancer immunotherapy.
Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive tumour type with a high risk of progression to metastasis and death. Immunotherapy has emerged as an effective way to destroy cancer cells by boosting the body’s own immune system to target and eliminate tumours, but more work is needed to improve the response rate in TNBC. Prof Laura Mackay and team have identified a type of immune cell, called tissue-resident memory T cell, and found that TNBC patients with higher levels of tissue-resident memory T cells have better prognosis and higher survival outcome. The team aims to understand the genes and proteins that make these cells most effective at killing tumours to design a novel immunotherapy treatment strategy for TNBC, which currently faces limited effective treatment options.
PROFESSOR BRUCE MANN
Optimising radiotherapy to improve early-stage breast cancer patient outcomes.
Radiotherapy is an important part of breast cancer treatment, aiming to reduce the risk of the cancer returning in the same breast. However, it can cause considerable short and longer-term side effects. In a proof-of-concept clinical trial, the PROSPECT trial, Prof Bruce Mann and colleagues showed that a combination of preoperative MRI and pathological features of the tumour could identify women with early-stage, low-risk breast cancer, who could safely avoid radiotherapy. In a new trial, PROSPECTIVE, the team aims to recruit a larger international cohort of patients to validate the findings of the PROSPECT trial. This has the potential to change the guidelines and practice to improve outcomes and reduce morbidity by providing less intensive more efficient treatment of early-stage, low risk breast cancer in Australia and globally.
About National Breast Cancer Foundation
NBCF is Australia's leading not-for-profit organisation funding world-class breast cancer research with money raised entirely by the Australian public.
Our vision is simple - Zero Deaths from breast cancer. How? By funding world-class research focused on how to prevent, detect, treat and stop the progression and recurrence of breast cancer.
With your support and generosity, we can achieve our vision and stop deaths from breast cancer.
