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Mission-based funding: A Cancer Research UK approach to lung cancer research

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by Nick Jones | Analysis

13 January 2025

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Two Cancer Research UK researchers working at a lab bench.

Funding excellent research is central to what Cancer Research UK does – we have invested in £4 billion of research over the last decade. But we know that funding alone is not enough to deliver on our mission. Our scale, expertise and partnerships enable our funding to go further.

Back in 2014, our research strategy highlighted lung cancer as a priority cancer of unmet need. We saw there had been significant improvements in 5-year survival rates for many common cancers, but the outlook for lung cancer patients remained poor. 

Despite it being the most common cause of cancer death, the amount of lung cancer-specific research was not proportionate to the scale of the issue, and investment had stagnated. As a leading funder of cancer research, we recognised our pivotal role in driving the shift needed.   

Now, we look back on how more than 10-years of mission-based funding has transformed the UK lung cancer research ecosystem — making the UK a world leader in the space. Here we reflect on how this can bring huge benefits to patients and what our new mission focused government can learn from our approach.

What did we do? 

In 2012, we conducted a detailed evaluation of our research portfolio and review of the broader funding landscape, which highlighted the clear unmet need for further investment in lung cancer research. Armed with these insights, we convened a workshop with the research community to discuss key challenges and opportunities for us to drive progress. These discussions informed the development of a long-term strategy to build critical mass in the field, which we then tackled through three pillars: 

Building world class research infrastructure and capacity: We‘ve focussed on growing UK capacity through our research infrastructure. This has been exemplified by our Lung Cancer Centre of Excellence, launched in 2014 and recently renewed with support from ScottishPower, which brings together world-leading capabilities at the University of Manchester and University College London to create a collaborative environment where lung cancer research can flourish. 

Funding research excellence: We knew that to drive a significant shift in lung cancer research, we needed to provide more active management of our portfolio and support dedicated strategic research initiatives alongside our existing response mode grants. All of our investments, from small scale project awards to large scale initiatives like TRACERx EVO, are underpinned by a focus on scientific excellence, and determined by robust evaluation, maximising the chance that they will succeed. 

Building community: Catalysing breakthroughs relies on a thriving, sustainable research community to spark new ideas and generate innovative approaches, but these communities don’t grow overnight.  Driven by our strategic funding and further stimulated by our international Lung Cancer Conferences in 2017, 2019 and 2022, we have built a world-leading community in the UK and supported the people that make breakthroughs happen, from early career researchers and clinicians looking to begin their career, to encouraging research leaders to turn their attention to lung cancer. 

What impact has this had? 

  • Investment: Over the last 10 years, we invested over £231 million on lung cancer research, including support for 270 Principal Investigators, 22 fellowships, and more than 40 PhD students. This sustained investment at scale, combined with a clear strategy, has enabled the UK to become an international leader in lung cancer research and development (R&D) with a strong portfolio of world class research and a sustainable research community. 
  • Knowledge: We have funded globally leading research programmes, such as our, investment of £10 million in the long-term TRACERx –TRAcking Cancer Evolution through treatment (Rx) – study which has been bolstered with £4 million of additional funding from partners. Our Lung Cancer Centre of Excellence has helped create more than 15 computational tools since 2019, widely adopted in lung cancer and beyond, and has underpinned over 20 academic clinical trials. 

The impact of TRACERx

TRACERx’s unprecedented scale matched its ambition, with 250 investigators based at 13 hospital sites across the UK analysing blood and tumour samples from 815 people with nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC) – a national effort with significant global impact. The programme has uncovered new insights into how lung cancer evolves over time, unlocked potential new ways to diagnose and treat it, fostered a growing lung cancer research community in the UK and generated new areas for commercial science. 

  • Towards patient impact: Almost 668,000 lung cancer deaths have been avoided since the 1970s, according to our latest analysis – the equivalent of saving 100 lives a day. This was enabled by huge gains research has driven in our understanding of hard-to-treat cancers like lung cancer. By powering projects like TRACERx, which helped identify new techniques to detect lung cancer at an early stage, and LungVax, which could lead to the world’s first lung cancer prevention vaccine, we are continuing to drive this progress to ensure we continue to transform outcomes for people affected by lung cancer. 

What can Government learn from this? 

There are clear transferable lessons to be learnt from our experience in supporting the UK lung cancer research ecosystem.  

  • Clear diagnosis of the problem: Through our strategy process, we identified the weaknesses in the lung cancer research ecosystem – and set ourselves on the path to tackle them. Without taking time to make a clear diagnosis of the barriers to achieving your mission, you cannot strategically target investment and galvanise partners around the solutions.  
  • Time and patience: To deliver on the ambition a mission sets, it must be backed by long-term sustained investment, at scale. In lung cancer this sustained investment has been central in building and maintaining the communities, connections and leadership that are driving the change we needed. 
  • Clear evaluation: By taking a data-driven approach supported by expert review, and committing to act on what the evaluation says, you ensure that energy and investment is still centred around your objectives, and that resources are invested where they have the most potential for impact. 
  • Partnership: Collaboration is at the heart of our mission-driven approach, ensuring that the impact of our funding is greater than the sum of its parts. International partnerships such as Cancer Grand Challenges enable global, interdisciplinary teams to take on the toughest challenges in cancer, while collaborations with industry such as those we foster through Cancer Research Horizons are critical to harness the translational power needed to bring progress to patients. 

What’s next for our mission?

We have made enormous progress in lung cancer research over the last ten years, but the job is not done. Lung cancer remains by far the most common cause of cancer death in the UK. So, as our latest investment demonstrates, Cancer Research UK will remain focused on this area, pushing knowledge and innovations through to inform prevention, detection and treatment in the future.  

We now need to capitalise on our transformation of the lung cancer R&D landscape. We need to translate discoveries from the lab bench to the patient bedside to deliver lifesaving tests and treatments for patients, go further with prevention, and tackle the inequalities that are prevalent in lung cancer outcomes.  

We will drive mission-based action across all of our cancers of unmet need to ensure that we beat cancer for everyone. Different approaches will be needed in different cancer sites, with an approach bespoke to the community and the challenges that they face. 

Our success in lung cancer shows the impact that dedicated investment and targeted activities can have on areas of strategic priority. It demonstrates the important link between research and patient impact. And it provides lessons for Government on how to make their missions a success. 

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