Samuel’s Love Your Sister charity – which has so far raised more than $12 million for cancer research – has allocated $712,000 to the Macquarie University Cancer Biobank.

The funds will help chief investigator Professor Helen Rizos (Head of Biomedical Sciences) and her team continue their ground-breaking work in harvesting high quality cancer biospecimens across all cancers including breast, colorectal, prostate, brain, liver, gastrointestinal and bladder, so researchers and clinicians can work collaboratively and efficiently to find better treatments and cures.

“This generous grant from Love Your Sister will go towards the next phase of our vision which involves generating the genetic and cellular ‘fingerprint’ data for every banked cancer biospecimen,” says Professor Rizos.

“The first 100 biospecimens will be banked and profiled within the next two years thanks to Love Your Sister.”

The partnership agreement with Love Your Sister came about  through a collaboration between the Office of Advancement and the Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences, after they received  information from Research Services.

Samuel and his older sister Connie – who succumbed to breast cancer in 2017 – created Love Your Sister to fund important research projects to fund across the country.

The Macquarie University Cancer Biobank, which launched last year, has the capacity to store 80,000 cancer biospecimens.