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Breast cancer researchers unite to prevent recurrence

Breast Cancer Trials

Key Facts:

• $25 million grant from National Breast Cancer Foundation to combat recurrent breast cancer deaths
• Associate Professor Christine Chaffer from Garvan Institute to lead five-year project 'AllClear'
• Project brings together Breast Cancer Trials and international research groups
• Research aims to prevent early breast cancer recurrence
• Initiative unites world-leading experts from various scientific disciplines

7th August 2025: Breast Cancer Trials has welcomed the announcement of a $25 million dollar grant by the National Breast Cancer Foundation, aimed at curbing the number of deaths from recurrent breast cancer.

Breast Cancer Trials’ Scientific Advisory Committee member and Garvan Institute of Medical Research Associate Program Director of the Cancer Cell Plasticity Lab, Associate Professor Christine Chaffer, has been awarded this grant to lead a five-year project called AllClear. The project will bring together multiple research groups, including Breast Cancer Trials, world-leading Australian and International experts from different areas of science, with the united aim of preventing early breast cancer from recurring.

Every day 58 people are diagnosed with breast cancer in Australia, and more than 3,300 women die from the disease each year. However, patients don’t often die from the cancer in their breasts, but from cancer cells that have spread, most commonly to the bones. 

Once in the bones, these cancer cells can lie dormant, often for years, but in some patients these ‘seeds of relapse’ reawaken to establish metastatic cancer that can be resistant to current therapies.
 
Garvan Institute’s Professor Peter Croucher, in collaboration with Breast Cancer Trials researcher, Associate Professor Rachel Dear at St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney, has developed a method to find and isolate those rare cells from the bones of people with breast cancer.

ALLCLEAR aims to discover how cancer cells become dormant and why current treatments are unsuccessful, then use this knowledge to identify which patients have disseminated cancer cells in bone marrow at the time of diagnosis, recognise the behaviour of those cells and target them, intervening before recurrence. 

Dr Nicholas Zdenkowski, Investigator on the project and Breast Cancer Trials’ Medical Advisor, said that this collaboration will provide a fantastic opportunity for efficiencies of discovery in early breast cancer treatment and ultimately has the potential to significantly improve patient outcomes.

“Breast Cancer Trials is collaborating on this important project with the view to developing a neoadjuvant (treatment given before surgery) trial platform,” he explained. “The groundwork done by the research will collect data that will inform clinical trial research to test new therapies to eradicate dormant cells, with the aim of giving every breast cancer patient the all-clear.”

Fellow Breast Cancer Trials’ researchers Professor Francis Boyle and Dr Sanjeev Kumar are involved with the clinical trial aspects of the research. The resulting trial platform will focus on giving patients with high-risk early breast cancer, appropriate treatments to their individual tumour characteristics.

While the lion’s share of AllClear’s funding comes from National Breast Cancer Foundation, collaborating research partners will contribute $5 million to the $25 million project.

“Breast Cancer Trials’ vision of no more lives cut short aligns with National Breast Cancer Foundation’s vision of zero deaths from breast cancer – this shared vision is central to the outcomes of AllClear,” said Breast Cancer Trials CEO Karen Price. “While survival rates have improved significantly, the fear amongst patients that their breast cancer will recur is very real. As Australia and New Zealand’s largest independent not-for-profit organisation dedicated solely to breast cancer clinical trials research, we are celebrating this announcement and are proud of our members playing a leading role in the science.

“We expect to see a big leap forward in discovering how breast cancer recurrence can be interrupted. Unlocking the secrets to that will be the key to no more deaths from breast cancer.”

About us:

Founded in 1978, Breast Cancer Trials conducts a multicentre national and international clinical trials research program, into the treatment and prevention of breast cancer. More than 980 researchers in 118 institutions across Australia and New Zealand are committed to the vision of no more lives cut short.

Contact details:

Sara McGregor

Media & PR Lead

M: 0424 591 241  

E: [email protected]