A single medical breakthrough – one that changes our understanding of cancer, dementia, immunology or infectious disease – could benefit hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

The vision behind WEHI’s Acceleration Partners program is to give supporters an opportunity to directly fund research with the potential to rapidly transform knowledge, treatment, prevention and health outcomes in key areas.

Established by WEHI director Professor Doug Hilton AO in 2022, the program has a single ambitious goal: to accelerate the pace of pioneering medical research that provides hope to patients now, while maintaining commitment to the long-term research that will provide life-changing treatments for future generations.

On the cusp

Each year, a group of like-minded donors who become Acceleration Partners make focused philanthropic investments in two research projects on the cusp of critical discovery. 

The goal of Associate Professor Ian Majewski’s group is to predict and prevent a wide range of diseases associated with ageing – including many types of cancer, inflammation and neurodegeneration – by investigating why some cancers run in certain families and what drives large differences in how individual cancer patients respond to therapy.

Dr Nadia Kershaw hopes to learn how to “switch off” the excessive signalling that results in the development of myeloproliferative diseases, a group of life-threatening blood cancers characterised by defective blood cells going into overdrive and damaging the bone marrow.

To learn more about how you can be part of the Acceleration Partners program, visit wehi.edu.au/accelerationpartners or contact the team on +61 (03) 9345 2403 or fundraising@wehi.edu.au.