The New Zealand Institute for Cancer Research Trust was formed in 1986, with the aim of establishing a fund to encourage and support cancer research in Otago and New Zealand.
In 2005, the New Zealand Institute for Cancer Research Trust contributed significantly to the University of Otago’s Leading Thinkers Initiative. The gift was matched by the Government under the Partnership for Excellence Programme, creating the Professorial Chair in Cancer Pathology at Otago’s Dunedin School of Medicine. The Chair provides a dynamic means of ensuring quality and continuous efforts are focused on the study of cancer.
Professor Michael Eccles was appointed to the Chair in December 2006. He had completed a PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Otago, before gaining his postdoctoral qualifications at Princeton University, Princeton, USA. Professor Eccles has been involved in important discoveries with the PAX family of genes – some of which appear to play a key role in the ability of cancer cells to survive – as well as other prominent discoveries in cancer therapeutics and genetics.
Eccles says the establishment and appointment of the Chair strengthens cancer research at the University of Otago, “New Zealand has some of the worst cancer statistics in the OECD and the creation of a Chair like this will go some way to helping address those poor figures.”
Professor Eccles focuses on gene expression profiling and epigenetics studies in his research practice using human cells and tissues from a number of cancer types, including one of the most prevalent cancers in New Zealand, melanoma. This skin cancer is by far, the most serious, giving New Zealand women the highest skin cancer death rate in the world, ahead of Australia.
This Chair will contribute to the research environment in perpetuity. But, for Professor Eccles and those who come after him, continued and sustained research funding is required. Further support for the laboratory, staff, PhD and post-doctoral students is critical to understanding and solving the riddle of cancer.
Dr John Broughton
Chairman of the New Zealand Institute for Cancer Research Trust.
