Thermo Fisher Scientific Supports Tour de Cure Australia 2014 to Accelerate Fight Against Cancer

Thermo Fisher Scientific supports the annual Tour de Cure Australia 2014 with its Life Technologies brand

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., a world leader in serving science, today announced that it is supporting the Annual Tour de Cure in Australia through its sponsorship, fund raising efforts, and donation of its Life Technologies Ion Torrent next-generation sequencing solutions to Tour de Cure to pass on to deserving recipients for cancer research projects selected by Tour de Cure.

“We believe that this meaningful event by Tour de Cure will accelerate people’s efforts to fight against cancer.”

This year, Tour de Cure has selected the following two cancer research projects as recipients of the donated Life Technologies products:

• the research project led by Professor Alexander Dobrovic Head of Translational Genomics & Epigenomics Laboratory, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, will receive the Life Technologies Ion Torrent Proton System;
• the project led by Professor John Rasko AO, Head of Gene and Stem Cell Therapy Program, Centenary Institute of Cancer Medicine & Cell Biology, will receive the Life Technologies Ion Torrent PGM System.

Both instruments play key roles in the genetic analysis workflow to assist cancer researchers with better identification of cancer types and will be donated in a package including other resources that supports the research.

The two research projects will be introduced on March 29 at the Tour de Cure’s Community Celebration Dinner event at Canberra.

Tour de Cure is a non-profit-making organization dedicated to finding a cure for cancer through awareness and raising funds for cancer prevention and research projects with its 1,576km distance long signature tour. This year, 111 participants will cycle from Sydney to Hobart starting from today, March 28 to April 6; among them is Melbourne-based Guillaume Morin, a technical applications specialist for Life Sciences Solutions at Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Supporting the event with the Life Technologies brand for the second time, including its sponsorship of AUD$24,000 for the event and fundraising target of AUD$20,000, the company has expanded its contribution to supporting cancer research projects this year. In total, Thermo Fisher Scientific is further donating more than AUD$500,000 worth of Life Technologies products to key research projects selected by Tour De Cure. The donated items include essential resources for cancer research labs such as qPCR consumables, Bioinformatics training, and the above referenced Life Technologies next generation sequencing solutions, the Ion Torrent Proton System and the Ion Torrent PGM System. The details of the research projects that receive the Life Technologies products and solutions will be introduced at the Tour de Cure website.

“As a member of the community, we are delighted to participate in Tour de Cure, which gives a chance to reach out to more people and drive towards making cancer a more manageable disease,” said Owen Wright, Managing Director for Australia/New Zealand (ANZ) for Life Sciences Solutions, Thermo Fisher Scientific. “We believe that this meaningful event by Tour de Cure will accelerate people’s efforts to fight against cancer.”

“We are excited to be partnering with Thermo Fisher Scientific and thinking differently about how together we can help cure cancer." said Samantha Hollier-James Co-Founder & CEO Tour de Cure. "Since 2007, Tour de Cure has raised over $10million and funded 137 cancer research, support and prevention projects to help men, women and children. We need to keep riding, raising funds and collaborating with pioneering partnerships like this to enable great scientists to work together to find a cure cancer.”