Samuel Johnson (left) inspects Macquarie’s cancer research facilities on a recent visit to meet Professor Helen Rizos (centre) and her team.
Australian actor Samuel Johnson OAM, who won the hearts of Australians when he was crowned Dancing With The Stars winner last year, has chosen to partner with Macquarie University in the fight against cancer.
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.
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This is wonderful! Well done to those in the Advancement Office and FMHS for this work. I’ll always remember Samuel best for starring in the great Australian series The Secret Life of Us – am I dating myself???