Dear members,

A belated welcome to 2013! I hope you had a good break and are surviving the grant season. 

2013 is shaping up to be a busy one for the CRN, starting with the formation of the new CRN Council, which will advise the University on cancer research strategy, development and investment. Voting registration closes this Monday 18 Feb, with voting for elected Council members opening shortly thereafter.

The Wills Review of Health and Medical Research at Sydney will soon report its recommendations, and fostering major multidisciplinary efforts have been a key focus of its work so far.

Our Special Interest Groups (SIG) are forging ahead with Breast Cancer and Comparative Oncology having added new momentum in 2012, with our longer established Metabolism & Microenvironment and Health Data Linkage groups also very active.

Some of their plans are highlighted below. If you’d like to join any of these groups, please email Merilyn Heuschkel (merilyn.heuschkel@sydney.edu.au)

Encouraging and supporting the next generation of cancer researchers is a key priority of the CRN. The annual Postgraduate Cancer Research Symposium has become a very successful flagship event. We’ll be hosting the Symposium in November, and it would be great to see all our postgraduate students and supervisors there this year. The CRN Postgraduate Student Travel Grants program will also be held again in 2013. 

Planning for the 2014 Sydney Cancer Conference is under way and we are calling for enthusiastic people to join the Organising Committee. Please read on for more details.

Might your research be enhanced by access to health linkage data? Remember that the CRN supports a University subscription to CHeReL, the Centre for Health Record Linkage, giving our researchers discounted access to health linkage data.

The CRN was established to foster collaboration and communication between cancer researchers, and to raise your profile in the University. Please get involved with the Network in 2013. Let us know about your successes, join or establish a SIG, inform the rest of us about your upcoming events. Let us know what you need from the Network.

Please also promote CRN membership to your colleagues: our influence as a community of researchers depends on a strong, visible and active CRN membership. Joining takes just a couple of minutes.

Good luck in all of your research and other endeavours throughout 2013.

Prof Graham Mann
Chair, University of Sydney Cancer Research Network 

In the last 10 months the BCSIG has evolved from an idea, proposed by Prof Graham Mann, to being one of the largest and most vibrant Cancer Research Network Special Interest Groups.  The next 12 months is positioned to be just as productive as we work towards providing our 102 members and affiliates, further opportunities for cross-disciplinary dialogue and collaboration in breast cancer research.

The survey conducted at the BCSIG inaugural Seminar held on 21 November 2012 gave insight into who our members are and what members want from this special interest group. We learned that while a majority of the poll participants were happy with the ‘theme’ in which they were allocated, more than half said that they cross over more than one ‘theme’. We also learned that a majority are interested in attending two BCSIG seminars per year.

In 2013, we will be running two seminars: one on 23 May and another in October.  Details about these events will soon be available. We are in the process of completing a NBCF ThinkTank application to support us in organizing the October seminar which we envision to be a key event for breast cancer research at the University of Sydney. We will update you on developments.

Finally, on behalf of the Steering Committee, I would like to welcome to the executive, Prof Peter Lay (representing the Biology and Genetics theme), Ms Gai Grayson (consumer representative), and Mr Zechariah Marting (student representative). 

We at the Steering Committee welcome your ideas for the BCSIG and this newsletter. Please email your comments and suggestions to bcsig@sydney.edu.au. 

Best wishes,
Prof Patrick  C Brennan, Chair BCSIG

The Breast Cancer SIG (BCSIG) is seeking an enthusiastic early career researcher (ECR) to join the BCSIG Steering Committee. The ECR representative must have been awarded a PhD or equivalent research doctorate within the last five years, and will be expected to attend BCSIG Steering Committee meetings (held every 2-3 months) and BCSIG events (2-3 each year).

In cooperation with the BCSIG Steering Committee and BCSIG Chair (Prof Patrick Brennan), he or she will:

• facilitate early career researcher interests through the identification of issues and activities of importance to ECRs carrying out breast cancer research;
• work with the Steering Committee to develop networking, mentoring and collaborative opportunities for early career breast cancer researchers;
• contribute to the activities of the BCSIG with special emphasis on representing the interests of early career members.

To self-nominate, please email the following information to Merilyn Heuschkel (merilyn.heuschkel@sydney.edu.au) by 5pm on Wednesday, 27 February 2013:

• Name:
• Affiliation:
• A paragraph describing the nature of the nominee’s research (approx. 150 words):
• A paragraph describing how he or she would contribute to the Breast Cancer Special Interest Group (approx. 200 words)

*The nominee must be a member of the Cancer Research Network and currently undertaking research focusing on breast cancer.

The BCSIG ECR representative will be selected by the BCSIG Chair, Prof Patrick Brennan, and members of the Steering Committee. The representative will serve a one year term and may be re-elected for a further year.

If you have any queries, please contact Merilyn Heuschkel (merilyn.heuschkel@sydney.edu.au).

To kick-off 2013, the CO-SIG will be hosting a special lecture by Dr Tony Papenfuss from The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research:

“Sequencing the Tassie devil facial tumour and making sense of it”
Date: Wednesday, 20 March 2013
Time: 5.00–6.30pm (presentation from 5.00pm, light supper from 6.00pm)
Venue: Conference Room, Darlington Centre, The University of Sydney
RSVP: By 11 March 2013 to merilyn.heuschkel@sydney.edu.au
 
Dr Tony Papenfuss’s research interests include:

• Analysis of next generation sequence data in cancer
• Methods for analysis of structural variation in cancer genomes
• Next generation sequencing in malaria
• Computational comparative genomics
• Sensitive genomic sequence search techniques using hidden Markov models
• Tasmanian devil facial tumour disease

Happy New Year to you all. I’d like to welcome back all M&M SIG members, including those who joined after our meeting in June 2012. We aim to be an interdisciplinary group with broad membership and representation, to encourage interactions between USyd researchers who might not meet otherwise.

Planning of events for this year is underway, and we’re keen to get your input. We’re planning to hold a seminar in May or June, and would like to invite an interstate speaker as a focal point, with some USyd presentations as well. If you have suggestions of external speakers to invite, or would like to nominate yourself or a team member, please let us know. We’re particularly keen to showcase research by postgraduate students and ECRs, so tell us about your research, and we’ll make sure that you can tell others about it as well. 

We’re always looking for new members, so please also forward this e-mail to any new students, postdocs and staff members that you know with microenvironment and/or metabolism interests in cancer. Anyone is welcome to email Merilyn Heuschkel (merilyn.heuschkel@sydney.edu.au) to join. If you have ideas about other activities that the M&M SIG could undertake, please let us know as well.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes,
A/Prof Jennifer Byrne, Chair M&M SIG

The Cancer Research Network invites nominations for SCC2014 Organising Committee member positions. SCC2014 will be held from 16-18 July 2014 in the New Law Building at the University of Sydney.

The Network seeks a balanced committee of enthusiastic people that successfully reflects the geographic and disciplinary breadth of the University's cancer researchers. 

Committee members will be required to:

• Plan and organise SCC2014 (under the guidance of the Chair);
• Attend and contribute to regular meetings throughout 2013/2014; and
• Attend SCC2014.

Administrative and management support will be provided by the Cancer Research Network Executive Officer.

We encourage and welcome any Network member's self-nomination for committee service.  

To submit a nomination, please complete the online form by COB on Thursday, 28 February 2013.

The Cancer Research Network Management Committee will assess all nominations and select the Organising Committee. The term of membership is approximately 18 months, commencing early 2013.  

If you require any further information, please contact Merilyn Heuschkel by email or on 9114 1943.