On the morning of Saturday 10 October, the King's College community will gather on the riverside at St Lucia for a 5km run or walk, to raise funds for breast cancer researchers working on the PA Hospital campus.
The funds go to PA Research Foundation’s breast cancer initiative Project Pink, and the focus this year is projects in combination therapies, looking at how treatments might be paired to work more effectively together. That work matters because, while genuine breakthroughs have been made in treating some types of breast cancer, many forms remain resistant and incurable, and 57 Australians are diagnosed with breast cancer every single day. Using existing drugs can also mean research advances to clinical trials and hopefully treatments much faster.
The annual King's in Pink event is run entirely by students. This year's committee is comprised of ten of them, across different year levels, degrees and hometowns, led by Eva Henshaw, and they have set themselves a target of raising $26,000 in 2026.
The event goes back to 2008 and to Thérèse Eddy, who had arrived at King's a few years earlier and set about welcoming more women into what was then an all-male college. At around that same time one of the College's students had lost a family member to breast cancer and wanted to raise money for research, and when his idea met Thérèse's plan of a cocktail lunch that would bring the mothers of Kingsmen and other women supporters through the College gates, King's in Pink was born. Both of her goals have since come good, with the lunch now a fun run that draws hundreds to the river each October, and as many women living at King's in recent years as men. This year Thérèse is undergoing treatment for breast cancer herself.
The event begins with registration from 8.30am on the forecourt at King's College at the University of Queensland, with the run and walk starting at 9.15am. Every fitness level is welcome, whether you are chasing a time or simply there for the view of the river. Afterwards there is breakfast and coffee in the King's Dining Hall along with a panel of women from the College community speaking about their own experience of breast cancer.
PA Research Foundation Community Partnerships Manager Ellen Dann said the event's strength was that it had never been run at arm's length.
"These are students who have watched a mother or an aunt or a friend go through this, you can feel it in how hard they work at it and how passionate they are about raising funds.
"What it funds is just as personal. The combination therapy research of Professor Fiona Simpson and the Simpson Lab are developing is aimed squarely at saving lives and improving outcomes for breast cancer patients.
“Community fundraising like this is what gives our researchers like Fiona and her team the funds they need to take lab research toward clinical trials."
You can register for King's in Pink here, and if you can't make it to St Lucia on the day you can still back the King’s in Pink committee’s efforts by donating here.
