Collaborative Research Accelerator Grant – ‘AllClear’ Program

An exceptional local and international collaboration led by Associate Professor Christine Chaffer at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, will be the first recipient of the National Breast Cancer Foundation’s (NBCF) inaugural Collaborative Research Accelerator Grant. The first Collaborative Research Accelerator Grant will drive forward a pioneering research program called ‘AllClear’.

Learn more about the Collaborative Research Accelerator Grant.

AllClear is enabled by Garvan’s strategic collaboration with St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney and UNSW Sydney and is a collaboration of nearly 60 researchers across seven leading research institutes and organisations. This includes Breast Cancer Trials, the University of Sydney, the University of Newcastle, together with world-renowned international partners including Yale and Washington University, and 11 hospitals across NSW. The AllClear research program integrates the voices of people with lived experience of breast cancer, and ensures diverse representation from metropolitan, regional, rural, and multicultural communities.

Project Description

The goal for the AllClear program is to ultimately halve deaths from breast cancer, by tackling one of the most urgent and complex challenges: ‘how to stop breast cancer from coming back’.

The AllClear team will study these cancer cells in the bone to understand how they hide, how they are different to cells in the primary tumour and why current treatments may fail. Through an extensive clinical network, and harnessing advanced technologies, including machine learning, molecular profiling and biomarker discovery, the AllClear program aims to better predict cancer recurrence, develop new therapies, and fast-track the testing of these therapies through cutting-edge clinical trials.

By intervening at this critical stage, before dormant cancer cells reawaken, AllClear has the potential to prevent recurrence and save lives.

Collaborating institutions and organisations

• Lead Institution – The Garvan Institute of Medical Research
• National – Breast Cancer Trials
• National – The University of Sydney
• National – University of New South Wales
• National – The University of Newcastle
• National – Australian Catholic University Limited
• International – Yale School of Medicine, USA
• International – Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, USA

NSW hospital sites

• St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney
• Mater Hospital
• Chris O’Brien Lifehouse
• Westmead Hospital
• Nepean Hospital
• Campbelltown Hospital
• Liverpool Hospital
• Lake Macquarie Private Hospital
• Calvary Mater Newcastle
• Dubbo Hospital
• Wollongong Hospital

Why this work is needed

Each year more than 21,000 people will be diagnosed with breast cancer and around 3,300 Australians still die from the disease. For some of these people, breast cancer cells can hide quietly in the body, most commonly in the bone, reappearing years or even decades later. Around 15% of people will experience a recurrence of their breast cancer within 10 years, and this return can be life threatening.

Despite decades of progress, breast cancer recurrence is a challenge that continues to cost lives. Solving it is essential to helping to end deaths from breast cancer.

Expected outcomes

The goal for the AllClear program is to ultimately halve deaths from breast cancer.

Learn more about NBCF’s inaugural Collaborative Research Accelerator (CRA) program.