FECRI get high-profile patron

THE Fiona Elsey Cancer Research Institute hosted a special guest last week as management and staff welcomed philanthropist Primrose Lady Potter as their patron.

Lady Potter toured regional Australia’s only cancer research facility last week, and said she was attracted to the institution for two key reasons.

“It’s doing something in a regional city. The state is getting bigger and bigger and we have to encourage regional expansion and this is doing something really valuable,” she said

“Secondly, I’m interested in cancer research. I’ve had a lot of cancer so I can see that we need hope and something to happen to help us.”

With her experience with organisations like the Ian Potter Foundation, the Melba Foundation, and the Howard Florey Institute, it is hoped her patronage will bring newfound resources and attention for FECRI.

Playwright and long-time friend of Lady Potter, Roland Rocchiccioli, said it was “very important” that the Institute now has her patronage.

“She knows everybody, absolutely everybody. It’s useful to have somebody like Lady Potter at the head of it so she can go out there and encourage people to part with hard-earned cash,” he said.

“It’s really difficult to raise funds, and so she’d have an enormous influence on that, so hopefully we’ll be able to use her profile and maybe the Ian Potter Foundation to actually get some money for research.”

FECRI has 15 staff and five PhD students currently researching alternatives to radiation therapy and chemotherapy and the immune system’s involvement in repelling the illness.

Honorary director Professor George Kannourakis has a particular area of study he’s most excited to see supported, which targets what he’s called “bar code” proteins that help cancer cells evade the immune system.

“Once we’ve identified those proteins, we’ll make antibodies to those proteins and those antibodies will be a cocktail that will treat every form of cancer, in my opinion,” he said.

“I’m hoping in five years’ time when somebody gets cancer they won’t have to go through surgery or radiation or chemotherapy, they just have a biopsy and cocktail of antibodies.”