- About
- Strategic Plan
- Structure
- Governance
- Scientific divisions
- ACRF Cancer Biology and Stem Cells
- ACRF Chemical Biology
- Advanced Technology and Biology
- Bioinformatics
- Blood Cells and Blood Cancer
- Clinical Translation
- Epigenetics and Development
- Immunology
- Infectious Diseases and Immune Defence
- Inflammation
- Personalised Oncology
- Population Health and Immunity
- Structural Biology
- Ubiquitin Signalling
- Laboratory operations
- Funding
- Annual reports
- Human research ethics
- Scientific integrity
- Institute life
- Career opportunities
- Business Development
- Partnering opportunities
- A complete cure for HBV
- A stable efficacious Toxoplasma vaccine
- Activating SMCHD1 to treat FSHD
- Improving vision outcomes in retinal detachment
- Intercepting inflammation with RIPK2 inhibitors
- Novel inhibitors for the treatment of lupus
- Novel malaria vaccine
- Precision epigenetics silencing SMCHD1 to treat Prader Willi Syndrome
- Rethinking CD52 a therapy for autoimmune disease
- Targeting minor class splicing
- Royalties distribution
- Start-up companies
- Partnering opportunities
- Collaborators
- Publications repository
- Awards
- Discoveries
- Centenary 2015
- History
- Contact us
- Research
- Diseases
- Cancer
- Development and ageing
- Immune health and infection
- Research fields
- Research technologies
- People
- Anne-Laure Puaux
- Associate Profesor Ian Majewski
- Associate Professor Aaron Jex
- Associate Professor Alyssa Barry
- Associate Professor Andrew Webb
- Associate Professor Chris Tonkin
- Associate Professor Daniel Gray
- Associate Professor Diana Hansen
- Associate Professor Edwin Hawkins
- Associate Professor Emma Josefsson
- Associate Professor Ethan Goddard-Borger
- Associate Professor Grant Dewson
- Associate Professor Isabelle Lucet
- Associate Professor James Murphy
- Associate Professor James Vince
- Associate Professor Jason Tye-Din
- Associate Professor Jeanne Tie
- Associate Professor Jeff Babon
- Associate Professor Joan Heath
- Associate Professor Justin Boddey
- Associate Professor Kate Sutherland
- Associate Professor Leanne Robinson
- Associate Professor Marco Herold Marco Herold
- Associate Professor Marie-Liesse Asselin-Labat
- Associate Professor Matthew Ritchie
- Associate Professor Melissa Davis
- Associate Professor Misty Jenkins
- Associate Professor Nawaf Yassi
- Associate Professor Oliver Sieber
- Associate Professor Peter Czabotar
- Associate Professor Rachel Wong
- Associate Professor Rhys Allan
- Associate Professor Rosie Watson
- Associate Professor Ruth Kluck
- Associate Professor Sandra Nicholson
- Associate Professor Sant-Rayn Pasricha
- Associate Professor Seth Masters
- Associate Professor Sumitra Ananda
- Associate Professor Tim Thomas
- Associate Professor Wai-Hong Tham
- Associate Professor Wei Shi
- Catherine Parker
- Chela Niall
- Deborah Carr
- Dr Alisa Glukhova
- Dr Anna Coussens
- Dr Ashley Ng
- Dr Ben Tran
- Dr Bernhard Lechtenberg
- Dr Brad Sleebs
- Dr Drew Berry
- Dr Gemma Kelly
- Dr Gwo Yaw Ho
- Dr Hui-Li Wong
- Dr Jacqui Gulbis
- Dr Joanna Groom
- Dr John Wentworth
- Dr Kelly Rogers
- Dr Lucy Gately
- Dr Margaret Lee
- Dr Mary Ann Anderson
- Dr Maryam Rashidi
- Dr Matthew Call
- Dr Melissa Call
- Dr Philippe Bouillet
- Dr Rebecca Feltham
- Dr Samir Taoudi
- Dr Shalin Naik
- Dr Sheau Wen Lok
- Dr Simon Chatfield
- Dr Tracy Putoczki
- Guillaume Lessene
- Helene Martin
- Joh Kirby
- Kaye Wycherley
- Keely Bumsted O'Brien
- Mr Joel Chibert
- Mr Simon Monard
- Mr Steve Droste
- Ms Carolyn MacDonald
- Professor Alan Cowman
- Professor Andreas Strasser
- Professor Andrew Lew
- Professor Andrew Roberts
- Professor Anne Voss
- Professor Clare Scott
- Professor David Huang
- Professor David Komander
- Professor David Vaux
- Professor Doug Hilton
- Professor Gabrielle Belz
- Professor Geoff Lindeman
- Professor Gordon Smyth
- Professor Ian Wicks
- Professor Ivo Mueller
- Professor Jane Visvader
- Professor Jerry Adams
- Professor John Silke
- Professor Ken Shortman
- Professor Leonard C Harrison
- Professor Lynn Corcoran
- Professor Marc Pellegrini
- Professor Marnie Blewitt
- Professor Melanie Bahlo
- Professor Mike Lawrence
- Professor Nicos Nicola
- Professor Peter Colman
- Professor Peter Gibbs
- Professor Phil Hodgkin
- Professor Stephen Nutt
- Professor Suzanne Cory
- Professor Terry Speed
- Professor Tony Burgess
- Professor Tony Papenfuss
- Professor Warren Alexander
- Diseases
- Education
- PhD
- Honours
- Masters
- Undergraduate
- Student research projects
- A new regulator of stemness to create dendritic cell factories for immunotherapy
- Advanced methods for genomic rearrangement detection
- Control of cytokine signaling by SOCS1
- Defining the protein modifications associated with respiratory disease
- Delineating the pathways driving cancer development and therapy resistance
- Developing a new drug that targets plasmacytoid dendritic cells for the treatment of lupus
- Development and mechanism of action of novel antimalarials
- Development of a novel particle-based malaria vaccine
- Development of tau-specific therapeutic and diagnostic antibodies
- Discovering novel therapies for major human pathogens
- Dissecting host cell invasion by the diarrhoeal pathogen Cryptosporidium
- Epigenetic biomarkers of tuberculosis infection
- Essential role of glycobiology in malaria parasites
- Evolution of haematopoiesis in vertebrates
- Human lung protective immunity to tuberculosis
- Identifying novel treatment options for ovarian carcinosarcoma
- Interaction with Toxoplasma parasites and the brain
- Interactions between tumour cells and their microenvironment in non-small cell lung cancer
- Investigating the role of mutant p53 in cancer
- Microbiome strain-level analysis using long read sequencing
- Minimising rheumatic adverse events of checkpoint inhibitor cancer therapy
- Modelling spatial and demographic heterogeneity of malaria transmission risk
- Naturally acquired immune response to malaria parasites
- Predicting the effect of non-coding structural variants in cancer
- Structural basis of catenin-independent Wnt signalling
- Structure and biology of proteins essential for Toxoplasma parasite invasion
- T lymphocytes: how memories are made
- TICKER: A cell history recorder for longitudinal patient monitoring
- Targeting host pathways to develop new broad-spectrum antiviral drugs
- Targeting post-translational modifications to disrupting the function of secreted proteins
- Targeting the epigenome to rewire pro-allergic T cells
- Targeting the immune microenvironment to treat KRAS-mutant adenocarcinoma
- The E3 ubiquitin ligase Parkin and mitophagy in Parkinson’s disease
- The molecular controls on dendritic cell development
- Understanding malaria infection dynamics
- Understanding the genetics of neutrophil maturation
- Understanding the neuroimmune regulation of innate immunity
- Understanding the proteins that regulate programmed cell death at the molecular level
- Using cutting-edge single cell tools to understand the origins of cancer
- When healthy cells turn bad: how immune responses can transition to lymphoma
- School resources
- Frequently asked questions
- Student profiles
- Abebe Fola
- Andrew Baldi
- Anna Gabrielyan
- Bridget Dorizzi
- Casey Ah-Cann
- Catia Pierotti
- Emma Nolan
- Huon Wong
- Jing Deng
- Joy Liu
- Kaiseal Sarson-Lawrence
- Komal Patel
- Lilly Backshell
- Megan Kent
- Naomi Jones
- Rebecca Delconte
- Roberto Bonelli
- Rune Larsen
- Runyu Mao
- Sarah Garner
- Simona Seizova
- Wayne Cawthorne
- Wil Lehmann
- Miles Horton
- Alexandra Gurzau
- Student achievements
- Student association
- News
- Donate
- Online donation
- Ways to support
- Support outcomes
- Supporter stories
- Rotarians against breast cancer
- A partnership to improve treatments for cancer patients
- 20 years of cancer research support from the Helpman family
- A generous gift from a cancer survivor
- A gift to support excellence in Australian medical research
- An enduring friendship
- Anonymous donor helps bridge the 'valley of death'
- Renewed support for HIV eradication project
- Searching for solutions to muscular dystrophy
- Supporting research into better treatments for colon cancer
- Taking a single cell focus with the DROP-seq
- WEHI.TV
Rare cancers

Rare cancers account for more than 20 per cent of cancers diagnosed in Australia, and 30 per cent of cancer-related deaths – more than any single cancer type. Our researchers are developing new strategies to select the best treatments for people diagnosed with rare cancers.
Rare cancer research at WEHI
Our researchers aim to improve the healthcare available for people with rare cancers. A major focus is to use information contained in the genomes of rare cancers to match them with existing anti-cancer treatments.
Our rare cancer research efforts are aided by our participation in:
- The International Rare Cancer Initiative
- The Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre Molecular Tumour Board
We are also a founding partner in CART-WHEEL (Centre for Analysis of Rare Tumours), an online network developed by BioGrid Australia, which allows people with rare cancers to contribute their personal data to research studies.
What are rare cancers?
Cancer is an uncontrolled growth of cells. A cancer type is considered rare if it affects fewer than 6 people per year per population of 100,000 people.
Rare cancers can arise in many different parts of the body, from different types of cells. Some may originate in a part of the body, such as the breast, where other more common cancer types arise, but from a different cell type to the more common cancer.
Rare Cancers Australia and RareCare provide information about distinct types of rare cancers.
Burden of rare cancers
Although few people may have a particular type of rare cancer, altogether there are many types of rare cancer. When considered together, rare cancers are a significant health burden in Australia and globally.
Twenty per cent of cancers diagnosed in Australia are classified as a rare cancer, but rare cancers cause thirty per cent of cancer deaths annually. People with rare cancers are more likely to die from their disease than people with more common cancers.
The outlook for people with rare cancers is not as good as that for people with more common cancers because:
Rare cancers are often diagnosed at late, more advanced and harder to treat stages, because health professionals may not recognise the symptoms of a rare cancer. Treatments for many rare cancers have not advanced at the same pace as treatments for more common cancers in recent years.
Improving treatments for rare cancers
Different types of rare cancers respond to different treatments, but effective treatment strategies have not been developed for many rare cancers. This is because:
- Research that could improve the outlook for individual rare cancer types attracts less interest and funding than research into more common cancer types.
- Researchers have limited access to clinical samples of a particular rare cancer type, restricting their ability to discover how the cancer develops and responds to treatment.
- Clinical trials of new treatments for rare cancers are often difficult to conduct as most current strategies to test treatments rely on access to large groups of patients who all have a similar condition.
- The systems for approving a medication for treating a particular cancer are often not flexible enough to enable approval of new treatments for a small group of patients. Our clinical translation page explains more about how medications are moved from clinical trials to approvals.
Our involvement in international rare cancer collaborations gives our researchers access to samples of rare cancers from around the world. This boosts the strength of our research into these cancers.
An important aspect of our research is to use information from the genome of rare cancer samples to recommend a treatment using existing anti-cancer medications. This strategy incorporates knowledge gained in treating more common cancers that may show similar genetic changes to a rare cancer sample.
Once a treatment for a person with a rare cancer is devised, our researchers monitor the success of the treatment, to guide future recommendations.
Further information and support for people with rare cancers and their families are available from:
Researchers:
Super Content:
A $3 million gift from the Stafford Fox Medical Research Foundation will ensure that Australians with rare cancers benefit from new approaches to diagnosis and treatment.
What can we do to ensure people with rare cancers are not left behind? Our panel of experts discussed this question at a public forum in 2014.
Genetic sequencing shows promise for matching people with rare cancers to the right treatments, according to a new clinical trial.
Researchers have uncovered how massive DNA molecules that appear in some rare cancers form, explaining how the tumours 'steal' and amplify genes to ensure their own survival.
How can patients suffering from rare cancers benefit from advances in treatments for other cancers?