The surgeons

As medical doctors and gynaecological oncologists we see the burden of women’s cancer every day.  These are women whose life turns around inside out in just one day when they get diagnosed with a life-threatening disease. Career, family, income – all this suddenly changes profoundly within a few seconds.  Many researchers look for solutions to reduce the development of cancer. Our role is to work with women directly to find better treatments and cures for gynaecological cancer once it has developed.

The very first clinical trial we ran from our centre was kick started with $20,000 from a private donor.  This amount of money convinced another donor to give $40,000, which was then enough to employ our first research nurse.  With her we could generate the first data, which we were able to show to a granting body.  With that grant we could generate more data, which helped to receive a couple of large government grants.  To date this trial runs across Australia, New Zealand and Asia enrolling several hundred patients from 17 hospital sites.  It is likely that this trial will change the way uterine cancer, the most common gynaecological cancer in Australia will be treated in the future.

In Queensland we have the best conditions to perform clinical research in gynaecological oncology. We are seven excellent gynaecological oncologists working from two hubs, The Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital (Herston) and The Mater Hospital (South Brisbane) as well from a number of private hospitals throughout Brisbane.  Our clinical trials enrol public and private patients equally. Operating on almost 2000 patients a year, of which 800 are newly diagnosed cancers makes us one of the largest gynaecological cancer centres world-wide. We normally enrol approximately 250 patients per year in one of our clinical trials.  In the past years, investments in our research group resulted in fantastic returns (see publications). Please help us to continue achieving great results.