Our unique position in the cancer landscape gives us the ability to catalyse change. By bringing together organisations, businesses and global experts, we can nurture innovative ideas to overcome barriers and accelerate interventions that benefit patients.
Our researchers helped pioneer interventions such as radiotherapy that benefits millions of people around the world each year. And half the world’s top cancer drugs have been developed by us, or with us, and these drugs help three out of four NHS cancer patients as they receive treatment.
Thanks to this research, more people are surviving their cancer than ever before.
- Sue, who took Olaparib, a drug we helped bring to market, as part of her ovarian cancer treatment.
Cancer Research Horizons is our innovation engine built to complement our network of exceptional researchers. We take cutting-edge innovations from the lab bench to the bedside, translating them into effective treatments and diagnostics for cancer patients.
Through Cancer Research Horizons, we’ve formed over 65 start-ups, brought 11 new cancer drugs to market and steered 170 new drugs into early-phase trials. And our intellectual property has allowed us to reinvest an additional £300m back into our science.
- Professor Peter Sasieni, Director of the Cancer Research UK Cancer Prevention Trials Unit
The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine and screening methods we helped develop can reduce cervical cancer rates to the point where almost no one develops it. Thanks to these advances, the World Health Organization has set an ambitious global target to eliminate cervical cancer as a public health problem.
Image by David Vintiner
Science is moving faster than ever, with new technologies unlocking ways to enhance and extend lives.
By plugging gaps in the translation journey we ensure that world leading ideas survive the journey from the lab to the clinic. But we need your help to make it happen.
Cancer survival is three times higher on average if diagnosed early. Yet almost half of all cancer cases are diagnosed when the disease is already at a late stage and harder to treat. Our National Biomarker Centre will harness the power of biomarkers – biological clues that can help us spot cancer earlier.
Professor Caroline Dive, CBE, is Director of our National Cancer Biomarker Centre. She believes we “have the potential to make a difference on a grand scale. The health of the public will be transformed if we get early detection of cancer right.”
Cancer in children and young people is different to cancer in adults and presents a unique set of challenges to overcome. The relative rarity of these cancers means that clinical trials are more complex and there’s less money invested from industry.
Our work driving discovery research into the clinic is bridging that gap, ensuring more people survive with a better quality of life. “We’re pushing the frontiers of treatment for childhood cancers,” explains Professor Louis Chesler, Lead of our Stratified Medicine Paediatrics 2 programme. “Every day, research is bringing us closer to a reality where every child with cancer receives treatment that’s tailored to the unique biology of their cancer.”
Too many ideas get trapped between research and development, and commercialisation. We need to get innovations off the shelf, funded and supported.
Our Cancer Impact Booster will create a stronger pipeline for ideas to become the treatments, diagnostics and medical devices of tomorrow. Professor Sergio Quezada, Cancer Research UK scientist and scientific founder of Achilles Therapeutics, highlights that “this fund for moving basic science to translation is hugely important, helping accelerate research and providing a support network for scientists to innovate. Cancer Research UK is uniquely poised to do this, their network of scientists, data and information is tremendous.”
Find out more about our work
We’ll take risks where others can’t, and help new cancer treatments, diagnostics, and technologies reach the clinic, faster.
With more innovation and translation, we can bridge the gap between cancer research and cancer interventions – making every cancer both treatable and beatable.
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