Cancer Research UK
Cancer Research UK is the world's largest independent cancer research charity, funding the Crick, ICR, Manchester, Cambridge, and the STAMPEDE and TRACERx trials.
£400M+ annual research spend; CRUK Centres network; Cancer Grand Challenges (with NCI); clinical trials units; patient information service.
- Cancer Grand Challenges
- CRUK Centres
- Clinical Trials Units
Built small-cell lung cancer models from circulating tumour cells and leads the Manchester institute.
Leads TRACERx, the study that follows lung cancers as they evolve, and showed how air pollution can trigger lung cancer without new mutations.
Diagnosed with bowel cancer at 35, she spent five years telling people to check their poo, co-hosted the BBC's You, Me and the Big C, and raised over £11 million for Cancer Research UK in the weeks before her death in 2022.
Iain Foulkes directs the research portfolio of Cancer Research UK.
Michelle Mitchell is chief executive of the world's largest independent cancer research charity.
Ruth Plummer is an early-phase trialist who ran the first-in-human study of a PARP inhibitor.
Relapse after surgery is driven by particular subclones that can be identified in the primary tumour and tracked in blood, which argues for evolution-aware adjuvant strategies. The pollution finding reframes carcinogenesis: some agents promote already-mutant cells rather than causing mutations.
Men diagnosed with prostate cancer that has already spread, or that is locally advanced and high risk, should start abiraterone (or another androgen-receptor pathway inhibitor) at the same time as testosterone suppression rather than waiting for resistance. This roughly halves the risk of death over several years. The same platform later showed that docetaxel chemotherapy and, in high-volume metastatic disease, triple therapy also help, and that abiraterone benefits men with high-risk disease treated with radiotherapy.
Lung cancers keep evolving after they form, and it is ongoing chromosomal instability rather than the number of mutations that best predicts who will relapse. This gives a rationale for targeting the earliest (clonal) drivers and neoantigens and for tracking evolution in blood after surgery.
A single biopsy is an incomplete picture of a patient's cancer. Truncal mutations shared by all cells (in kidney cancer, VHL) are the most reliable drug targets, whereas mutations in only some branches predict resistance. This is why liquid biopsy and multi-region sampling matter.
Pages like this
not linked directly; found by shared links- InstitutionNational Cancer Institute (NIH)
Shares Disclose R&D and manufacturing costs of publicly funded cancer drugs to get coverage, Grant progress reports must list what did not work, Living plain-language evidence summaries for every common cancer question in 20 languages, Publicly funded cancer AI must release open weights and model cards.
- InstitutionThe Francis Crick Institute
Shares Pool every multi-sample tumour genome into one open evolution atlas, A national rapid research autopsy network for end-stage cancer, The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research, Bank three spatially separate tumour blocks from every resection.
- TechnologyWhole-exome & whole-genome sequencing
Shares Pool every multi-sample tumour genome into one open evolution atlas, A national rapid research autopsy network for end-stage cancer, Bank three spatially separate tumour blocks from every resection, Wellcome.
- PathwayClonal evolution & minimal residual disease
Shares Attack extrachromosomal DNA, the engine of oncogene amplification, Intercept cancer at the field stage, Gerlinger: a single biopsy misses most of the mutations in a kidney tumour, TRACERx 421: the full-cohort picture of how lung cancer evolves and which subclones drive relapse.
- CancerOesophageal cancer
Shares A swallowable sponge test for reflux patients, offered in pharmacies, Add-Aspirin, Burden-weighted portfolio targets for every major cancer funder, Evaluate alcohol minimum unit pricing against cancer incidence.
- InstitutionThe Institute of Cancer Research
Shares A non-profit phase 1b combination unit that any drug owner can use, A precompetitive consortium for the twenty hardest cancer targets, Scale up public drug development that takes academic assets to phase 1, STAMPEDE: adding abiraterone to hormone therapy at diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer.
- TechnologyLiquid biopsy (ctDNA)
Shares Caroline Dive, Attack extrachromosomal DNA, the engine of oncogene amplification, Oxford Cancer – Oxford University Hospitals and University of Oxford, Charles Swanton.
- BottleneckPreclinical results do not reproduce
Shares Publicly funded cancer AI must release open weights and model cards, A home for the animal and organoid experiments that failed, Pre-register animal efficacy studies like clinical trials, Multi-centre randomised animal trials before committing to a human trial.