The Ballarat Cycle Classic is the Fiona Elsey Cancer Research Institute's biggest fundraiser each year, and every cent raised by the community keeps vital programs running.
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To be held for the first time across two days on February 19 and 20, there'll be everything from walks around the lake to 100 mile road courses, and a new mountain bike event through the Creswick Regional Park.
The independent institute, which has operated in Ballarat for more than 20 years, has raised more than $2.3 million over the years through the Cycle Classic.
Right now, teams of researchers are performing internationally-recognised work, understanding how cancer cell proteins interact.
The institute's director, Professor George Kannourakis, said the Ballarat community kept that work going.
"We're in as good a position as anyone to make discoveries here, that are really important discoveries, and that's what drives me," he said.
"The Cycle Classic is a very important part of that, because without that sort of funding, we'd be struggling a bit throughout the year - we don't get any government funding, it's one of those things where if we want to keep our work going, it's not going to come easy."
So what is the institute working on right now?
As well as published research on breast, bowel, and ovarian cancer in the last few years, there's a few big projects in the works which could lead to major breakthroughs.
Over 20 years, Professor Kannourakis and his team have collected cell samples every six months from more than a hundred people with leukaemia, providing a unique, longitudinal look at how the cancer can develop and change.
Sometimes, people can live with leukaemia without knowing - this is called chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.
"Patients can develop it and not know there's anything wrong with them, it's often picked up incidentally," Professor Kannourakis explained.
"What we've discovered through Dr Monirul Islam, a senior scientist, molecular biolgist, at the institute for many years, he's looked at patients who are well and don't get the disease - people thought it was "indolent" leukaemia, not a leukaemia likely to cause problems for patients and therefore not as aggessive - when we extract the genetic material, we found that the patients that are well do have the bad types of leukaemia, the same that causes the disease in patients with the symptomatic disease.
"Until now, everyone's thought there were two different conditions, the one that doesn't cause trouble and the aggressive one, and the thought was the aggressive one is related to a mutation that creates driver mutations associated with cancer
"What he's found is that when we follow lots of these patients who are well, over many years, they have the aggressive mutations but don't have the aggressive leukaemia, and that's something we're going to publish very soon, and that will be a very big international paper on that area."
The key to the research is what Professor Kannourakis describes as "barcode proteins" on the surface of the cells, which stop the immune system from destroying them.
Using the unique data from the sample bank, researchers have built a "phage library" to help sort through thousands of tiny proteins, looking for the right barcode.
The FECRI team has a hunch that the barcodes could be similar across several different types of cancer - if they can find the leukaemia one, they could help design treatments that can be further developed for people suffering from breast or bowel cancer.
"The organs of origin might be different, but the proteins are probably going to be similar," Professor Kannourakis said.
"To me, that's really what we're aiming to do in the institute, and it's where we're putting a lot of resources, it's important because we think it's going to unite all the other projects - the bowel cancer, ovarian cancer, breast cancer, kidney cancer, histiocytosis - there's a whole lot of other cancers that will benefit from knowing what these proteins are."
The Cycle Classic is a key part of this, because smaller research institutes can struggle to receive funding grants, particularly for novel, innovative work - Professor Kannourakis said grant bodies often looked for projects that had been "solved", instead of pure but "risky" research like FECRI's.
"For us to get results, it becomes an all-or-none project - we either have the barcode proteins there and we can discover them, and add proteins and antibodies, or you don't," he said.
"We've had issues all along with the funding system in Australia, and I'm not saying the big institutes and organisations don't deserve the funding, I'm sure they all do, they're highly regarded international researchers and I don't have an issue with any of that, but we don't have enough money set aside for innovative research, which is not reliant on who you are, but the idea."
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The institute also faces several other challenges, including the need to find a new, permanent home within the next three years, and COVID buffeting other fundraising programs.
But new initiatives, like the expanded Cycle Classic and a project in partnership with Ballarat's CHS Broadbent to donate proceeds from grain sales after a bumper harvest year, will help keep the institute's "head above water".
"We rely on support from the community to keep this going," Professor Kannourakis said.
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