TICKETS sold out within 12 hours to bring a glamour back to Ballarat in what would be one of the city's first major gala events in 18 months.
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Fiona Elsey Cancer Research Institute has booked its biennial ball at Civic Hall for September 4 and organisers remain confident of getting people on the dancefloor, despite the state's latest double lockdowns.
If successful with regulations, the event will build on what was possible for The Ballarat Foundation's Dancing With Our Stars event in late March. Dancing With Our Stars still had a largely online component due to small guest numbers, no dinner tables and no food.
FECRI's Cancer Research Ball raised more than $150,000 in 2019 to support its work in Ballarat as the only cancer research centre in regional Australia.
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Ballarat-based land developer Integra has signed up as a major partner to help ensure the event can play out - depending restrictions.
FECRI aims to raise more than $100,000 to develop research focused on the immune system, its role in cancer and how it can be used to treat cancer.
The Institute has continued to work through the pandemic on research - with 25 papers published the past two years - and work with biopsies. FECRI honourary director George Kannourakis has maintained cancer would not stop for the pandemic and neither should vital work to better diagnose and fight cancer.
The Institute's world-leading work on Langerhans cell histiocytosis across three decades was recognised last month in an international medical journal, looking forward to what might first trigger the immune cell to become dysfunctional and create cancer-like tumours.
Fundraising has been tough for the Institute, which relies on community events and philanthropy.
Apart from squeezing in the Ballarat Cycle Classic earlier this year, FECRI hosted a virtual UnGala ball last year and has just closed its second annual online wine auction.
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