14 Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation This Year’s Progress: Research Updates The OCRF aims to leverage as much funding as possible each year to achieve its mission. This year, the OCRF ran its national research grants round to identify new and exciting research proposals; continued to fund ongoing research that had been awarded in previous years; and continued with collaborative partnerships where joint funding supported ovarian cancer research endeavours. OCRF FUNDED RESEARCH During this financial year, the OCRF’s national grant process saw nine projects funded from around Australia. These projects covered the research priority areas of Research Priority Name Institute Research title Project Length Current Year Cost per year Dr Stephens Hudson Institute The Precision Medicine Program in Ovarian Cancer 3 2 $120,033 Prof Tanwar Uni of Newcastle Defining the roles of hormones in the pathogenesis of ovarian cancer 3 2 $188,759 Assoc Prof Lee QIMR Targeting G9a methyltransferase to block metastasis and overcoming chemotherapy resistance - 3 2 $97,940 Dr Bilandzic Hudson Institute Therapeutic Targeting of the Leader Cell Population in Ovarian Cancer 3 2 $261,540 Dr Warton UNSW Detection of ovarian tumour-specific DNA methylation in blood for the early diagnosis of ovarian cancer 3 3 $146,721 Assoc Prof Salomon Uni of Qld Validation of a Novel Exosomal Biomarker Panel for the Detection of Ovarian Cancer 3 3 $155,128 Dr Wu Uni of Qld Re-activating anti-tumour immunity by targeting N-MYC-Let7 axis in ovarian cancer 3 3 $83,704 Dr Stephens Hudson Institute Active Ratio test (ARt) for the Detection of Early-StageOvarian Cancer 3 3 $285, 341 Assoc Prof Hill QIMR Discovery of new blood protein biomarkers for early detection of ovarian cancer 3 3 $129,981 Early Detection Treatment Prevention The total value of funding for these projects for the year was $1,469,147.