Much like Matt Findlay during the pony hop race on Saturday, the Border Ovarian Cancer Awareness Group is leaving city slickers “in the dust” when it comes to fundraising for research.
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Professor David Bowtell received a $75,000 donation from BOCAG on Saturday and the leader of Garvan Institute’s ovarian cancer program said it was a staggering amount.
“I think BOCAG would be absolutely punching above their weight in terms of the amount of money they raise, compared to some of the major metropolitan areas,” he said.
“Its a substantial amount of money and we’re going to use it for DNA sequencing of long term survivors – these are women who have beaten the odds.
“Ovarian cancer tends to respond very well to initial treatment but then the cancer evolves resistance.
“We want to understand how these women have had such a remarkable response to treatment.”
Dr Bowtell said this sequencing began five years ago and resulted in the release of a research paper two years ago which was the world’s biggest study into ovarian cancer.
“With this study now on long-term survivors, we’ve got the first paper coming out on that now and we’ve become part of an international consortium involving America, Europe and Australia.
“We’re the single biggest contributor.
“We now understand ovarian cancer is many different diseases and each in need of their own targeted treatment.
“It’s a disease that’s only going to get better through research and this kind of support really helps us part the clouds, understand the enemy and hopefully come up with cures.”
BOCAG president Heather Watts said the $75,000 donation on Saturday was the biggest they had been able to give to Garvan so far.
“It’s through the generosity of the community we have that amount of money and we’ve also given $108,000 to the local cancer trials,” she said.
“We started so small and now we’ve raised over $200,000
“It’s research that will give the answers eventually.
“The race today was amazing, 12 business got on board and we had 56 in the marquee last year and 115 this year.
“We’ve very pleased with the awareness of people and seeing everyone on the ground wearing their teal ribbons.”
Matt Findlay won the pony hop race with a flourish for the Commercial Club.
“There was a late scratching and I came in at the last minute to race,” he said.
“It’s such a great cause – I know people who have had ovarian cancer and lost their lives, it’s pretty tough.”
The event raised more than $15,000 for BOCAG.
