The Cancer Council spends around $19 million on research in Victoria each year.
This table shows our research expenditure over the last three years. Except for the amounts provided through our Medical and Scientific Committee, the amounts below include money provided directly to our inhouse researchers plus money they win in competition from external agencies such as the National Health and Medical Research Council and US National Institutes of Health.
Research |
$000s |
$000s |
$000s |
| Support of basic scientific studies and programs funded by the Medical and Scientific Committee, clinical investigations and programs | $5067 | $6259 | $8644 |
| Victorian Cancer Registry—registers all cancer cases in Victoria and provides statistical analyses | $1682 | $1622 | $1904 |
| Centre for Behavioural Research in Cancer—a centre for research into behavioural aspects of cancer prevention, detection and rehabilitation | $2407 | $3183 | $2987 |
| Cancer Epidemiology Centre—a centre for research into the occurrence, distribution and determinants of disease | $3399 | $3775 | $3857 |
| Health 2000—a study to ascertain the effect of lifestyle factors (especially diet) on the incidence of a range of diseases. | $570 | $1290 | $567 |
| VicHealth Centre for Tobacco Control—a centre to investigate new ways to reduce tobacco usage | $1316 | $1635 | $1867 |
| Total research | $14,441 | $17,764 | $19,826 |
More information about our research can be found in our Annual Review.
More information about our income and expenditure is in our annual report to parliament.
The fields of research differ. In response to a lack of epidemiological and behavioural research in cancer in Victoria, in the 1980s the Cancer Council decided it needed to develop these fields by setting up two new research centres, the Cancer Epidemiology Centre and the Centre for Behavioural Research in Cancer. It has continued to fund these ‘inhouse’ groups at our Carlton HQ, and they now attract substantial additional research support from other agencies. All other fields of research are supported in universities, institutes and hospitals through a competitive grant scheme funded by the Cancer Council.
One of the four basic strategies of The Cancer Council Victoria is to ‘Build the Knowledge Base for Cancer Control’. Hence, we invest in research along the whole spectrum of cancer control from studies designed to:
There are three basic ways to promote research: support for the people who do the research; support for the specific projects they design to test a hypothesis to answer a defined question; and support for the infrastructure needed to do the research. The Cancer Council invests in all three types of support, although the balance between them may vary from time to time depending changes in the science or in the operating environment. Examples include:
There is no single body which coordinates cancer research worldwide, nor would such a system achieve anything even if it were possible.
The main objective is to build world cancer knowledge from research as rapidly as possible. Cancer researchers exist in a worldwide community of researchers, and ‘market forces’ work quite well to minimise duplication of effort and promote stepwise accumulation of knowledge. Within countries, as an incentive for coordination, funding agencies often give preference to collaborative applications that include researchers from multiple sites and different disciplines. National and international registers of clinical trials enhance coordination, as well as ensuring that patients have the best chance of finding a trial they might be eligible to enter.
Some duplication of results is always desirable in science in order to have a high level of confidence in the evidence on which to base actions. The healthy competitiveness of researchers also militates in favour of them keeping up to date with other scientists’ work in order to identify the ‘next’ opportunity to investigate an original idea. Online access to all the latest scientific journals and scientific conferences assist in this process.
Where does the money come from? Around half of our research income comes from charitable donations and fundraising. The rest comes from government grants.
This figure shows our income sources for 2006.
More about our biomedical research program
We also support cancer clinical trials at these hospitals, including patients from all over Victoria:
More about clinical trials research
Research funding for our biomedical researchers is allocated by our Executive Committee, on advice from our Medical and Scientific Committee.
Applications for research funding are called for and assessed and ranked by expert committees. This is called ‘peer review’. This expert peer review process gives priority to promising research and is a way of ensuring that we do not duplicate research done elsewhere.
Then the Medical and Scientific Committee decides which applications should be funded, for how much and for how long.
This is a highly competitive process. Only about two in five applications are successful. Unfortunately we often cannot fund projects that we identify as worthwhile, due to lack of money.
We fund the best quality research based on the research proposal and the track record (ability, expertise and publication record) of the research team.
We do not give priority to any particular type of cancer.
Researchers are required to report annually on the progress of their research.
Four hundred prominent Victorian cancer specialists are active in our committees, including the Medical and Scientific Committee and the Victorian Cooperative Oncology Group.
Read about the Cancer Council Director, Professor David Hill AM
Introducing our research program
Science and medicine are highly competitive but it’s in a researcher’s interest to publish.
Scientists communicate their research at conferences and through letters and articles in medical and scientific journals. Increasingly, electronic journal publication is improving speedy access to new findings.
Research and results are scrutinised by peers for errors and oversights, and scientific consensus about what evidence ‘holds up’ is usually reached quite quickly.
For research to be valid, it needs to be conducted by accepted scientific standards. When testing treatments, for example, this means conducting randomised controlled trials where possible, to eliminate the problem of bias.
‘Real science’ is published after a process of peer review by a reputable medical or science journal. When looking at research findings, check that the findings have been published in a genuine peer-reviewed medical or scientific journal. A good place to start is PubMed, a service of the US National Library of Medicine, which includes over 16 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles from 1950: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed
Evidence-based medicine is treatment based on current knowledge, obtained through scientific approaches. Essentially, this means that the measures used in the research are reliable and valid and that extraneous factors that might lead to false conclusions can be excluded because the design of the research was sound.
Clinical trials are an important part of the development of evidence.
Clinical practice guidelines are prepared to let doctors know what this evidence says about the current best way to treat patients with a particular illness.
More about clinical practice guidelines
Research projects in this country, and overseas, generally fall into 5 categories:
Some research projects are a combination of two or three of these categories.
When a person has more than one role, like ‘clinician,’ ‘researcher’ and ‘expert advisor,’ there is a possibility that his or her interests can come into conflict with one another.
Conflicts of interest can also arise when a researcher has a financial interest in a company that is providing funding or other support for his or her research project.
A person having more than one interest does not necessarily mean that the person has a conflict of interest. It may be perfectly ethical, even preferable, for a researcher to have many interests at the same time.
However, it is also important that the person tells someone that he or she has these interests. This is called a ‘declaration of interests’ and is required by the hospitals, universities and other professional organisations where research is conducted in Australia. In some situations, these institutions and organisations may also require that a researcher withdraw from a research project because of the nature of the interests that are in conflict with one another.
The hospitals, universities and other professional organisations where research is conducted in Australia have conflict of interest policies to govern their employees or members. If you are interested in learning more about these policies, you can contact the institution or organisation and ask to see the policy.
Download a copy of our brochure Cancer research and conflict of interest
