The value of our research

Supporting more than 100 researchers

Publishing in peer-reviewed journals

Maintaining a registry of all cancer diagnoses in Victoria

Achieving excellent results

Having research impact

Supporting more than 100 researchers

Each year in Victoria we support:

  • around 70 biomedical researchers in hospitals and universities around Victoria
  • around 35 behavioural and epidemiological researchers here in our Melbourne offices
  • up to 25 cancer clinical trials researchers in hospitals around Victoria.

We also provide administrative support to the research groups in the Victorian Breast Cancer Research Consortium. We also support the Victorian Cancer Biobank and the Victorian arm of Cancer Australia.

Publishing in peer-reviewed journals

On average, our Cancer Epidemiology Centre and Centre for Behavioural Research in Cancer produce at least one research paper in a peer-reviewed journal each week.

These and papers produced by external research supported by the Cancer Council publish add to around 200 scientific journal publications each year, which is a significant addition to the international pool of cancer knowledge.

Maintaining a registry of all cancer diagnoses in Victoria

We also house the Victorian Cancer Registry, which records every cancer diagnosis in the state. This information alone is vitally important for program planning and research, not only at the Cancer Council but in the state and nationally.

Achieving excellent research results

Over the past 70 years, our investment in cancer research has paid off handsomely. In the case of the work of Professor Don Metcalf, it has paid off spectacularly. Over 4,000,000 patients worldwide have received his discovery, G-CSF, as part of their treatment.

Having research impact

In 1999, the Australian National University undertook an independent study to quantify the research ‘impact’ achieved by agencies in Australia that fund medical research.

Using standard bibliometric methods to establish the impact of research funds provided to grantees, the ANU study identified the Cancer Council as the agency which achieved the greatest impact from the research it had funded (the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, National Health and Medical Research Council and Australian Research Council were also included in the analysis).


Source: Butler, L. Funding Australia’s basic biomedical research of 1993 and 1994, Medical Journal of Australia 1999, vol 171, pp 629–33.

Read about some of our current and past researchers

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