10 November 2009

A $2.5 million grant from the Australian Cancer Research Foundation (ACRF) will be used to establish a world-class cancer imaging centre at The University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB).

The ACRF Dynamic Biology Imaging Facility will be the most advanced imaging research facility in the Southern Hemisphere when it opens in early 2010. It will allow researchers to study the progression of cancer cells and their interactions with healthy cells.

"We will use the new facility to gain a detailed understanding of the molecules and mechanisms associated with the transformation of a healthy cell to a cancerous cell, and the invasion of cancerous cells through the body," IMB Deputy Director (Research) Professor Jenny Stow said.

"This is the key to understanding, and ultimately treating, cancer. It is particularly important that we understand how tumours spread throughout the body, as treatment becomes more difficult once a tumour has spread from its primary location."

The new facility will complement the work of a current ACRF facility at the IMB.

"The current facility has been enormously successful in underpinning cancer biology research at the IMB for the past five years, and has allowed our researchers to generate some of the highest-quality and most innovative imaging to date," Professor Stow said.

"However, fluorescence imaging is widely hailed as the fastest-growing area of cancer research, and by supplying us with the equipment necessary to conduct fluorescent imaging, the ACRF has enabled high-level research into the future and ensured increasingly insightful and translatable outcomes from cancer research.

"We thank the ACRF for recognising this fact, and for funding a complementary facility."

The ACRF acknowledged IMB’s strength as a cancer research centre.

"The IMB team is an outstanding research team with a track record of high achievement in research that informs our understanding of cancer," ACRF Chief Executive, David Brettell said.

"They have developed special expertise and a worldwide reputation for use of imaging, and I am confident that this grant will enable them to uncover important information that will further increase our understanding of cancer."

The Institute for Molecular Bioscience is a systems biology research institute whose scientists investigate complex processes such as growth and development at the levels of genes, proteins, cells and tissues, and the connections between these levels. By understanding these processes, and aspects that go awry in complex diseases, IMB aims to develop therapies, technologies and diagnostics to prevent or treat such diseases.

The Australian Cancer Research Foundation supports excellence in Australian cancer research and has awarded grants totalling $55 million in the past 20 years. Individual grants exceed $1.5 million and continue to significantly contribute to drastic breakthroughs in the fight against cancer.

Media contacts:
Professor Jenny Stow – +61 (07) 3346 2112 or 0434 075 195
ACRF CEO David Brettell - +61 (0) 414 521 879
Suzie Graham, ACRF - +61 (0) 418 683 166
Bronwyn Adams, IMB Communications - +61 (07) 3346 2134 or +61 (0) 418 575 247