Getting ahead of cancer: our 2024 research highlights

“Timing is everything when you’re treating cancer,” Dr Iain Foulkes, our executive director of research and innovation, explained earlier this year. If you wanted a quick way to tell the story of Cancer Research UK in 2024, you could say we’ve taken that idea and run with it.

Foulkes was talking about the final results of the INTERLACE trial, where our researchers made the biggest improvement to cervical cancer treatment in decades. The trial involved starting chemotherapy six weeks earlier, with an extra course of drugs before surgery. That simple tweak, which doesn’t involve any new treatments, almost halves the risk that people with cervical cancer will die from the disease.  

Treating cancer is a delicate balance, and reordering chemotherapy won’t always be the best option, but the finding points to a wider truth: in most cases, the earlier we’re able to intervene, the more effective our interventions will be.  

That’s why, throughout 2024, we’ve put such a focus on how and when we deal with cancer – on turning it from a disease doctors diagnose and treat to one we seek out and stop, as well as addressing the issues that cause it in the first place. 

Want to know more? Here’s our round up of some of the year’s biggest and most important stories.

The rise of cancer prevention vaccines 

Unlike the vaccines we’re used to in other parts of healthcare, most cancer vaccines are treatments, rather than prevention tools. They’re usually given to people to help their immune systems recognise and fight cancer cells after those cells have already appeared. 

This year, we jumped ahead, launching three cancer prevention vaccine projects, primarily at the University of Oxford. Each one is designed to help people’s immune systems recognise the early signs of specific types of cancer.  

Doctors could use these vaccines to protect people with a high risk of developing certain cancers long before those cancers start. 

“Getting the immune system to recognise and attack cancer is one of the biggest challenges in cancer research today,” explained Professor Tim Elliot, research lead for our lung cancer vaccine project, LungVax, in March. “If we can replicate the kind of success seen in trials during the [COVID-19] pandemic, we could save the lives of tens of thousands of people every year in the UK alone.”  

LungVax would be most suitable for people who currently or have previously smoked.

The second project, OvarianVax, could help women with BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene variants that make them more susceptible to ovarian cancer.  

The third, LynchVax, is designed for people with Lynch syndrome, which increases the risk of bowel cancer, womb cancer and some other cancer types.  

There should be many more ‘CancerVax’ projects to come.

The first smokefree generation since the 16th century 

LungVax could herald a new way of preventing lung cancer, but we already know what’s most effective. With tobacco being the biggest preventable cause of cancer and death in the UK, it’s crucial to focus on stopping people from using it in the first place. 

The Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which was reintroduced to Parliament this year, can help to do just that. If it becomes law, it will ensure that people born on or after 1 January 2009 can never legally be sold tobacco in their lifetime, helping to create the first ever smokefree generation. 

All year, our Smokefree UK supporters and campaigners have been helping show politicians just why that’s so important.  

Largely thanks to their work, the second edition of the Bill cleared its second big hurdle in November, with MPs voting 415 to 47 in favour. That’s an even bigger majority than the original Bill received before its progress was halted by July’s general election.  

There’s more work to do, but, clearly, the tide is turning against tobacco. We’re closer than ever to ending cancers caused by smoking across the UK. 

It’s hard to put into words just how significant this could be. Smoking causes 160 cancer cases every day across the country. Cigarettes are the only consumer item that, if used as intended, will ultimately kill most of the people who keep buying them.  

We’re proud to say that in 2024, we took huge strides towards finally stopping that harm and creating what could be the first smokefree generation since the 16th century. 

Find out more about the Bill, including its measures to extend smokefree places and introduce a licensing scheme for tobacco and vapes, here. 

Catching oesophageal cancer with the capsule sponge test 

In the early 2000s, Professor Rebecca Fitzgerald began imagining a sort of gullet (or food pipe) “bottle brush” that could make diagnosing oesophageal cancer quick, simple and cheap. Over time, her idea expanded into the capsule sponge test – a pill on a thread that doctors and nurses can use to collect oesophageal cells without the difficulty or discomfort of an endoscopy (a camera down the throat). 

Our BEST3 trial has already shown that the capsule sponge test is 10 times more effective at finding oesophageal cancer than standard GP care. Now we’re going to see if we can use it to revolutionise our approach to diagnosing the disease. Over the coming years, the 120,000+ person BEST4 study will show whether the capsule sponge can support a screening programme to find Barrett’s oesophagus, a condition which can lead to oesophageal cancer, in people with chronic heartburn. 

BEST4 is happening in two parts. The first, which launched in January, is testing whether the capsule sponge test can replace endoscopies as a way of monitoring people with Barrett’s oesophagus for early signs of oesophageal cancer. The second part, focusing on the heartburn screening programme, started in November.  

The NHS is inviting eligible people to take part in the trial by text message. For everyone else, keep an eye out for the specialist capsule sponge screening vans that might soon be delivering the tests near you. 

More big news in early diagnosis

BEST4 was far from the only one of our big early diagnosis projects to make headlines this year.  

In summer, the results of the BARCODE study, which we helped fund, showed that a DNA saliva test helps identify men at high risk of prostate cancer. It could be the first reliable way of screening for the disease, overcoming the limitations of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood tests, which can lead to more harms than benefits. 

We’ve also been looking at ways of making the HPV tests used for cervical cancer screening work for more women and people with a cervix. Currently, physical and mental barriers keep 1 in 3 from regularly attending their cervical screening appointments, but the YouScreen trial showed that offering self-sampling could help one million extra people take part.  

Our funding helped YouScreen test a technique using a vaginal swab, which is less invasive than current screening methods but still means sending samples to labs. With Papcup, developed by Sânziana Foia, we’ve also been backing a more innovative approach. Foia’s invention is designed to spot the high-risk HPV infections in menstrual blood within minutes, without any swab at all. 

And then there’s the ‘lollipop’ test for mouth cancer, which brings many of the same benefits as the capsule sponge. As well as replacing invasive biopsies, it could also help doctors diagnose oral cancers earlier, when treatment is more likely to be successful. The hydrogel material our scientists in Birmingham developed for the test can be flavoured, too – or converted to work with urine (though typically not at the same time).  

Powering world-class research for 2025 and beyond

The progress we’ve made in 2024 will help save lives and stop cancers for generations to come.

And yet, as 2024 turns to 2025, it’s important to remember that each year is just a small stretch of a long journey. Just as a car needs fuel to reach its destination, clinical research needs funding to transform bright ideas into brighter and healthier futures. 

Our supporters are the reason we’ve been able to fund the projects above. And, as well as powering our work today, donations mean we can make the sustainable commitments that will lead to more lifesaving advances tomorrow. 

In 2024, the public’s generosity meant we were able to award £173m to our Cambridge Institute (home to the capsule sponge, among many other breakthroughs). It’s the largest single grant we have ever awarded outside of London.  

With the new funding, our world-leading researchers at the University of Cambridge will keep unlocking new insights into how cancers develop, grow and spread. They’ll also be able to focus even more closely on harnessing the immune system to combat the disease. 

Meanwhile, across the UK, we’ve been able to commit £58.7m to help train more clinician scientists, specialist doctors with the expertise to connect early-stage research to changes that can help patients. 

And, in March, Cancer Grand Challenges, the funding initiative we co-founded with the National Cancer Institute in the US, announced its largest funding round yet, with five research teams receiving up to £20m each.  

Two of those teams will be focusing on developing new treatments specifically for children’s and young people’s cancers. The C-Further consortium, a pioneering international initiative we launched with the scientific charity LifeArc in September, is set up to do the same.  

So, it’s clear we’re set up for some incredible advances over the coming years, too. We look forward to telling you all about them. 

Sadaf and Tim