Cancer Trials New Zealand (CTNZ) was established in 2003 in response to demand from New Zealand clinical and laboratory researchers who were unable to convert their research ideas into a clinical trial due to the lack of locally accessible expert advice in the development, conduct and interpretation of clinical trials.

The scope of trials of interest therefore ranged from: new ways of preventing, diagnosing, treating and monitoring cancer, to the refinement of established treatments and understanding the delivery of care within cancer services, including the impact of cancer on the person as a member of society. There are direct parallels to the goals and scope of the New Zealand Cancer Control Strategy.

Our emphasis is to provide support for studies that have particular relevance to New Zealanders – from the perspective of those that are at risk of or get cancer, and from the perspective of those that are New Zealand cancer researchers.

Building and retaining a high-quality cancer research workforce in New Zealand is one of our great challenges if we are to keep pace with modern strategies in cancer research and care. We support research ideas that have come from New Zealand researchers, as they have a greater understanding of the cancer issues here and can apply their international knowledge to the local priorities. CTNZ has also assisted New Zealand researchers who have identified studies relevant to New Zealand but whom have come from overseas. These studies may be testing new technologies or medicines owned by commercial entities (pharmaceutical, biotechnology and device companies) so CTNZ works with The University of Auckland’s commercial arm - Auckland UniServices Ltd - to ensure any core grant funding used is recovered in these circumstances.

CTNZ has been extremely fortunate to receive a foundation core grant from the Auckland Division of the Cancer Society of New Zealand which, in addition to core grants from the pharmaceutical industry and from private donations, has allowed CTNZ to develop a strong and responsive operational team that has been able to get several research projects up and running.

The core grant is designed to support the development of studies and to assist in the application for funding for the conduct of these studies. The core grant therefore is not designed to support individual research studies as much as to ensure a constant supply of high quality proposals to be considered by funding agencies.

Compared to countries with which we like to compare our cancer research activities, we have a significantly lower base-funding level for all areas of research. Novel ways of funding research, in particular clinical and epidemiological cancer research have been activated in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia for some time now – creating a large gap in our capability to use research to improve the quality of our cancer care.

CTNZ therefore approaches the goal of improving cancer outcomes through research design and conduct but also through workforce development and advocacy and advice on research policy – all of which are related.