New funding to unite transatlantic forces for the early detection of cancer

We’re launching new research funding grants to encourage new collaborations between researchers in the UK and US in the priority field of cancer early detection.

Two new funding schemes are open now for applications for researchers at UK institutions and at the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) to work together:

• The CRUK-OHSU Project Grant will fund substantial, novel, collaborative early detection research of up to 2 years and up to £250K to the UK-based researchers plus $300K for the OHSU-based researchers.

• The CRUK-OHSU Spark Award will ignite new early detection research collaborations between UK and OHSU researchers. Grants will fund up to 1 year and up to £20K for UK-based researchers plus $20K for the OHSU-based researchers, to support networking meetings, travel and pilot research.

The Application deadlines for both awards are 16 January 2018. At the same time, our other early detection project and programme grants are reopening for a second round of funding.

Enabling earlier detection and diagnosis of cancer is one of our top priorities. In our Research Strategy we outlined our ambition to improve outcomes from the 2 in 4 patients who survive cancer today to 3 in 4 within 20 years. We believe that early detection will be essential to achieving such a transformation in patient outcomes.

The new funding schemes build on our existing transatlantic partnership with OHSU, which reflects our aligned goals to detect cancer earlier. The Knight Cancer Institute at OHSU recently raised $1 billion for research on the early detection and precision treatment of cancer, and are establishing themselves as leaders in the field.

The partnership will see CRUK and OHSU working together to achieve our goals and encourage research collaborations across the sites, as well as sharing of knowledge and expertise. Our first endeavour was the creation of an annual International Early Detection of Cancer Conference, to bring researchers together and to share the latest groundbreaking research. The first conference was held in September last year in Portland, Oregon, and the second conference will be held 20-22 September in Cambridge, UK. The third conference will be returning to Portland in October next year.

We anticipate the new awards will unite experts from across the Atlantic, resulting in novel ideas at the forefront of research and forging us closer to our goal of detecting cancer earlier.