# Bowelbabe Fund for Cancer Research UK

Source: https://onco.cc/institutions/bowelbabe-fund/  
OnCo record `bowelbabe-fund` (Institution). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

The fund Dame Deborah James launched in the last weeks of her life; a restricted fund within Cancer Research UK, it has raised £21 million and backed 16 research projects.

## Summary

Dame Deborah James, the broadcaster known as Bowelbabe, launched the fund in May 2022 while in hospice care for bowel cancer. It is a restricted fund within Cancer Research UK. Its own site reports £21 million raised so far and 16 projects funded worth over £20.3 million, focused on early detection and personalised medicine, alongside work that continues her campaign to share information about bowel cancer and break down stigma around symptoms. It is one of the clearest recent examples of a single patient's public account becoming a durable research fund.

## Fields

- Kind: Institution
- Last checked: 2026-09-10
- Also known as: Bowelbabe Fund
- City: London, GB
- Type: consortium
- Website: https://bowelbabe.org

## Sources

- Bowelbabe Fund: https://bowelbabe.org/

## Connected records

- cancers: [Colorectal cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/colorectal/)
- institutions: [Cancer Research UK](https://onco.cc/institutions/cruk/)
- people: [Dame Deborah James](https://onco.cc/people/deborah-james/)
- bottlenecks: [Patients lack understanding, navigation and agency](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-patient-voice/), [The hardest cancers are found late](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-early-detection/)

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JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/bowelbabe-fund.json