After 10 years of planning, the $120 million Lowy Cancer Research Centre − the Institute’s new home − opened in May 2010. The move marked the beginning of a hugely exciting chapter for the organisation, whose staff now numbered close to 150.
Constructed on the University of NSW campus and featuring purpose built, state of the art facilities the equal of any in the world, the Centre allowed for expansion of staff numbers and turbo-boosted the Institute’s research effort. The Institute’s move to the Lowy Cancer Research Centre in 2010 marked the beginning of a new era of productivity and progress.
Moving into the Lowy Centre was a big step up… it felt like we were a real Institute. There was almost a sense of arrival.
– Prof Michelle Haber AM, Executive Director
The move to the Lowy Centre heralded a time of unprecedented state-wide collaboration. Within a year, the Institute became a founding partner in the Kids Cancer Alliance − bringing together all childhood cancer clinical care and research in NSW and shortly thereafter joined ‘Paediatrio’ (later renamed Luminesce Alliance), a state-wide translational paediatric research entity. It also became a partner in the Cancer Therapeutics Cooperative Research Centre (CTx), an Australian Government-led drug discovery organisation. A new age of cooperation had begun.
In 2013, results of the 10-year national clinical trial of the Institute’s minimal residual disease (MRD) testing were published. Use of MRD testing had not just improved outcomes for children with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), but had doubled the survival rate of children with high-risk disease from 35% to 70%. MRD testing became the national standard of care for children with ALL, and continues to save children’s lives every year.
2015 saw the Institute launch its boldest initiative yet, joining with the Kids Cancer Centre at Sydney Children’s Hospital to establish the Zero Childhood Cancer (ZERO) Personalised Medicine Program, the world’s most comprehensive precision medicine program for children with cancer. Following a NSW-based pilot study, a 3-year national clinical trial for children all over Australia with high-risk or relapsed cancer opened in 2017. Building on the success of this clinical trial, joint funding by the Australian Government and Minderoo Foundation was announced in 2020, enabling the ZERO program to not only continue, but to be progressively expanded to include all children diagnosed with cancer in Australia – regardless of the type or risk profile – by the end of 2023.
We’re just over the moon about the progress being made by the Institute. It gives us the motivation to keep going; it makes us want to do more.
– Fay Hogan, Ladies Committee
Signalling the next chapter in the Institute’s history, the Australian Government and NSW Government jointly announced in 2019 that the country’s first-ever Children’s Comprehensive Cancer Centre (CCCC) was to be built on the Randwick Hospital Campus. Due for completion in 2025, this world-class facility will be the new home of both the Institute and an expanded Kid’s Cancer Centre, with capacity for 900 scientists and clinicians working together under one roof. For the first time, childhood cancer research and clinical care will be fully integrated, allowing discoveries made in the laboratory to be applied in the clinic more quickly than ever before, ultimately benefiting all children with cancer.
The upcoming move to the Children’s Comprehensive Cancer Centre symbolises everything we’ve done, and epitomises the beginning of the next stage of our journey.
– Prof Michelle Haber AM, Executive Director
