About Cancer Grand Challenges
Cancer Grand Challenges was founded by the two largest funders of cancer research in the world – Cancer Research UK and the National Cancer Institute in the US. Uniting an international community of partners, Cancer Grand Challenges supports a global community of diverse, world-class research teams to come together, think differently and take on some of cancer’s toughest challenges.
Through Cancer Grand Challenges, teams are provided with up to $25m awards and empowered to rise above traditional boundaries to ultimately change outcomes for people with cancer.
Our highlights
Cancer Grand Challenges is a global cancer research initiative that takes a bold approach to funding research - by uniting global research teams to tackle cancer’s most complex challenges. In less than a decade, the initiative has funded 16 teams from 92 research institutes across 16 countries – with $400m invested since it started.
Our community of over 1,200 investigators and collaborators are already delivering impact against these challenges. They’ve traced the mutational fingerprints left by cancer in our DNA, found new ways to map tumours in three dimensions and begun to explain the dramatic weight loss that affects so many cancer patients.
Unravelling tumour evolution
Without Cancer Grand Challenges, we simply could not bring this extraordinary group of people together.
- Professor Paul Mischel, eDyNAmiC Team Lead
Cancer cells contain runaway circles of DNA, called extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA), that help them grow, survive and evade treatment. The eDyNAmiC team are getting to the heart of the biology of this rogue DNA.
They’ve shown that the appearance of ecDNA can be an early event in the transition to cancer, and that it’s driving many of the most hard-to-treat cases of cancer. Now, they’re exploring if ecDNAcan be targeted and intercepted before cancer develops.
Incorporating patient voices
From the start, advocates have shaped the research strategy and our role continues to evolve.
- Margaret Grayson MBE, Cancer Grand Challenges Advocacy Panel Chair
The voice, experience and insight of people affected by cancer is vital to help translate the work we do into tangible impact for people, communities and society.
Patient advocacy is difficult to embed in discovery science. We’re overcoming this. The Cancer Grand Challenges Advocacy Panel – the first international panel of people affected by cancer – is helping to develop how patient voices are embedded into the research funded by the initiative.
Invest in research
From the initial discovery stage through to translation, trials and clinical applications, the complexity of cancer research acts as a constant barrier to breakthroughs.
We’ve already tackled many of the early problems we faced. Understanding what cancer is, and how many types there are. Developing treatments like radiotherapy that can kill cancer cells. But there are lots of other challenges – often more complex ones – that remain.
To solve them, we must bring the world’s brightest minds together, and ask them to think differently.
With your help, we can go further, faster. This spring, we’ll be announcing new teams to join our community. Since 2015, we’ve funded ten globally significant challenges – read about three of the challenges we’re tackling below.
Revealing how cancer starts
Why some cells become cancerous and others remain ‘normal’ despite containing cancer-causing faults remains a mystery. The multidisciplinary PROMINENT team is bringing a new perspective to this fundamental question of what causes cancer. This could lead to new ways to prevent cancer developing in the first place.
“It’s amazing to think that what we want to do with this challenge wouldn’t even have been possible five or six years ago.” – Dr Paul Brennan, co-lead of the PROMINENT team.
Improving quality of life
Up to 8 in 10 patients with advanced cancers will experience severe weight loss and lethargy due to a wasting syndrome called cachexia. This severely impacts quality of life and limits therapeutic options.
“Cachexia, fatigue and poor performance status remain major problems we deal with in patients suffering from advanced metastatic solid tumours, and advances in care will come with a deeper understanding of the molecular underpinnings of the clinical manifestations of late stage disease,” says Professor Charles Swanton, Cancer Grand Challenges Scientific Committee. The CANCAN team aims to rise to this challenge, uncovering what causes cachexia and how to treat it.
Manipulating the microbiome
It’s becoming increasingly clear that bowel cancer – the third most common cancer worldwide – is intricately linked to microbes in the gut. The OPTIMISTICC team is exploring how these microbes drive cancer and influence a person’s response to treatment. Their work could transform outcomes for people around the world.
“This global challenge will help us harness the therapeutic and diagnostic potential of the microbiome,” explains Professor Wendy Garrett, OPTIMISTICC co-team lead. “We’ve already discovered types of bacteria that increase the risk of bowel cancer and we’re now exploring if we can exploit this knowledge to reduce bowel cancer risk.”
Visit the Cancer Grand Challenges website
Members of the Cancer Grand Challenges eDyNAmiC team.
Your support will make a difference
We have our sights set on novel topics, and our list keeps growing. We will continue to link one challenge to the next, deepening our understanding of the right questions to ask and the best places to keep digging for answers.
With your support, we can convene and inspire the next generation of scientists, encourage the spread of tools and techniques among researchers throughout the world, and unlock life-extending and life-enhancing innovations.
Together, we will rise to every challenge.
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