swot analysis cancer research uk

Toll Free : +1 (800)910-6452

•   [email protected]
•   +1-971-202-1575   |   Toll Free: +1 (800)910-6452

• Company Profiles

Cancer Research UK - Strategic SWOT Analysis Review

• Category : Company Profiles
• Published On : November   2014
• Publisher : GlobalData

• Report overview
• Table of Content
• Request Customization
• Enquiry About Report

Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam.

Eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo.

How can we help you?

Contact us at the Consulting WP office nearest to you or submit a business inquiry online.

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Related Reports

2018-2023 global and regional commercial greenhouse industry production, sales and consumption status and prospects professional market research report published on : march   2018, 2018-2023 global and regional hydroponics industry production, sales and consumption status and prospects professional market research report published on : march   2018, 2018-2023 global and regional plant growth chambers industry production, sales and consumption status and prospects professional market research report published on : march   2018, global feed fats and proteins sales market report 2017 published on : june   2017, global feed fats sales market report 2017 published on : june   2017, emea (europe, middle east and africa) animal nutrition market report 2017 published on : june   2017.

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• 10 April 2018

Collaboration is the key to cancer research

• Neil Savage 0

Neil Savage is a freelance science and technology writer in Lowell, Massachusetts.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

You have full access to this article via your institution.

Illustration by Oli Winward

When Daniel Stover was doing his postdoctoral research in a cell-biology lab at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, he ran into a problem. He was studying a type of breast cancer, trying to work out whether genetic differences between one part of a tumour and another contributed to the cancer’s resistance to chemotherapy. He had plenty to work with — genetic information from hundreds of tumour samples — but no idea how to handle it all.

“I had generated an immense amount of sequencing data and couldn’t find anybody to analyse it,” says Stover, now an oncologist at the Ohio State University’s Comprehensive Cancer Center in Columbus. So, with the help of a bioinformatician in the same lab, he started studying computational biology, which became the focus of his studies. “I found that I loved working with data,” he says. All the papers he published as a postdoc ended up being based on informatics, and now his own lab, which he set up last September, focuses on clinical computational oncology.

Stover’s lab aims to fill the space between the computer experts who develop data-handling algorithms and the clinicians who focus on patient care, treatment and clinical trials. “In between, there’s a gap, and we try to fill that void and take these amazing algorithms and apply them in clinical settings,” he says.

Stover says the collaboration changed the direction of his career, in part because it gave him new skills that he could apply in working with other researchers.

Cancer research has become highly multidisciplinary. The field now includes not just clinicians and molecular biologists, but also computational biologists, statisticians, nanotechnology experts and chemical engineers. And that creates challenges for all those researchers. How do they work with people who have different areas of expertise, each with its own basic assumptions and specialized language?

Nancy Krunic, who works for Novartis Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, Massachusetts, heads the company’s Future Precision Medicine Diagnostics group, which is developing assays, software and other technology to aid in diagnosis. “No one person or one department, or one lab, is going to have all the tools they need to tackle the problem,” she says. “You absolutely need diverse backgrounds and subject-matter expertise.”

Whether they’re big pharmaceutical organizations or medical-device companies (Krunic previously worked at Luminex Molecular Diagnostics in Toronto, Canada), industry groups targeting cancer must form multidisciplinary teams, Krunic says, if they are to define and tackle problems in ways that are scientifically, clinically and commercially viable. As well as scientists and technologists, these teams will include people with expertise in, for example, marketing and regulatory issues, says Krunic.

Beyond biology

Programmes exist to promote cross-fertilization between disciplines. The US National Cancer Institute (NCI), for example, established a Physical Sciences in Oncology initiative in 2009 to team cancer biologists with physicists, mathematicians, chemists and engineers. Those disciplines come at cancer in a variety of ways. Chemical engineers devise new diagnostics and develop nanoparticles to carry drugs to tumours, or to act as contrast agents that make smaller tumours visible in imaging. Physicists and bioengineers study the effect of mechanical forces on tumour growth and behaviour, and mathematicians develop computational models to explain the complex interplay between different cancer cells, blood vessels, healthy tissue and drugs.

For example, researchers are working to understand the physical effects of a tumour’s environment. How does an increase in tumour stiffness affect the shape and behaviour of the cells within it? And when a metastasizing cell deforms to squeeze through tight spaces, what does the increased pressure do to the cell’s nucleus — does it, for instance, trigger processes that damage DNA? “It’s not just the physical forces, but that’s an important aspect of what’s being studied,” says Nastaran Zahir, director of the Physical Sciences in Oncology programme. Other projects include applying mathematical approaches such as game theory to determine dosing strategies that will minimize the development of drug resistance, instead of applying the standard ‘maximum tolerated dose’ approach.

Zahir has experience of crossing disciplines. She earned her bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering, and studied plasma physics before moving into radiation biology and getting her PhD in bioengineering in a cancer research lab. So she’s aware of the difficulties. “Biology has its own culture. Physics has a different culture,” she says. “In physics, what you search for is sort of the ultimate truth — is there a law? But biology’s very messy, and you don’t necessarily have an exact process.” Because biological processes change in response to new stresses, it’s difficult to come up with laws for how a targeted cell would react to a cancer drug, for example.

Language barriers

To help bridge such gaps between disciplines, the NCI created the Science of Team Science programme. Kara Hall, a behavioural scientist who directs the initiative, says it’s important for people to share knowledge with those from other disciplines in a comprehensible way. “That entails reducing the jargon that’s being used, or finding ways to define that jargon as you go along,” she says. It is often helpful to use analogies to explain key concepts in a field. It’s also useful for researchers to engage in ‘team learning’, in which individuals are tasked with gaining in-depth information on a topic and bringing it back to their colleagues. Hall says teams should reflect on how well they function, by discussing, for instance, whether their meetings are sufficiently frequent and informative.

Hall says that people must be open when they approach specialists in other fields. It’s important, she advises, to practise ‘disciplinary humility’ — to realize that all disciplines have both strengths and weaknesses, and to be willing to learn from fields other than your own. Finding a safe common ground to ask questions can be difficult. “If I’m a psychologist collaborating with a geneticist, I may be afraid to ask a ‘genetics 101’ question because I might be seen as intellectually inferior,” Hall says.

Other challenges in team science include the need for extra planning and management time, compared with individualized research. The approach can also require more team meetings and more travel, when collaborators are located across campus or at other institutions. And some institutional structures have not yet caught up with the concept, Hall says. Promotion and tenure committees tend to look mainly at the first and last authors of papers, she says. And that means they might not recognize how much a middle author has contributed — even though, in teams, middle authors play a crucial part in the research. Yet, Hall says, her programme’s surveys found that trainees who had worked in multidisciplinary teams reported that their experiences had made them more competitive in the job market.

Defining the goals of a project, planning its implementation and working out in advance how to resolve conflict are all important parts of setting up a collaboration. The NCI offers the Team Science Toolkit , an online resource whereby researchers can share information and post news about funding opportunities and job openings. It also helps to plan and support an annual Science of Team Science conference, which focuses on ways to make team-based research more effective. The next meeting runs from 21 to 24 May at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. And the US National Institutes of Health offers what it calls a “prenuptial agreement” to help scientists prepare for problems that can arise during a collaboration (see ‘Making it work’).

Making it work

To help researchers to collaborate in multidisciplinary groups and anticipate difficulties in a project, the Office of the Ombudsman at the US National Institutes of Health came up with what it calls a prenuptial agreement for research teams. This lays out areas in which teams should reach agreements before problems arise. Here are some of the questions it suggests asking and answering before a collaboration begins in earnest:

• What are the scientific goals and expected outcomes of the project?

• When will the project be over?

• Who will write the reports?

• How will you decide what to do if discoveries made during the project change the direction of your research?

• Who will do the hiring, firing and supervising?

• How will credit and authorship be assigned?

• How will you make decisions about new collaborations or spin-off projects?

• What will you do about patents and intellectual property?

• Who will manage the data?

• What will happen if a collaborator changes job during the project?

One early-career researcher taking a multidisciplinary approach is Viktor Adalsteinsson, who leads the blood-biopsy team in the cancer programme at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge. Although he earned his doctorate in chemical engineering, in 2015, Adalsteinsson knew from a young age that he wanted to help cure cancer. He did his PhD work at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, which was set up at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to bring biologists and engineers together under one roof. He helped to develop a system to isolate and sequence circulating tumour cells from blood samples, using his chemical-engineering education to deal with issues such as fluid dynamics and the amount of shear stress that cells could handle. Now in his own lab, he’s trying to capture cell-free cancer DNA from blood to perform sequencing for precision medicine, reducing the need for invasive biopsies.

One of the ways in which Adalsteinsson and the people he works with stay up to date is through frequent meetings and seminars, at which various specialists talk about their work. Having a network of colleagues who can explain research from other disciplines, or tell him whether a journal article is significant, is helpful, he says. “It’s impossible to be an expert in every possible area, and knowing when to turn to others is really important.”

Pool expertise

Sometimes the trick lies in knowing what not to read. “Being able to scan and reject a bunch of stuff is really important,” says Heather Parsons, a medical oncologist and physician at the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, who specializes in breast cancer and its biomarkers. She, too, emphasizes the importance of having a network of experts, developed through university and work, with whom you can discuss questions.

Parsons collaborates with Stover and Adalsteinsson on the liquid-biopsy work. “I like very much being part of this kind of a team,” she says, “but it requires that you don’t have an enormous ego and you don’t mind asking about things you don’t understand.”

At Stanford University School of Medicine in California, Guillem Pratx gets members of his physical oncology lab to take part in a journal club. They meet for an hour or so to focus on a particular paper, allowing people from different disciplines to gain a good understanding of its importance. He also requires them to attend meetings outside their field to broaden their knowledge. With enough exposure, he says, scientists can become comfortable with the terminology and concepts used in other areas. “I notice the more I sit in these talks, the more I understand,” Pratx says. “It’s like learning a new language.”

Pratx did his undergraduate and graduate studies in electrical engineering, and during his PhD studies he worked in a radiology lab, using graphics techniques from computer games to improve the processing of medical images. He did his postdoctoral research in radiation oncology, and he feels that using postdoc time to learn about an area outside one’s core speciality can pay off. It can be difficult to be hired by a lab that specializes in a field far removed from yours, he acknowledges. But if there’s some overlap, it can add valuable expertise.

Pratx’s lab, which includes scientists with backgrounds in physics, engineering, chemistry and biology, develops instruments, probes and algorithms for cancer imaging. The team is studying how the luminescence generated when therapeutic radiation hits tissue can be used to carefully aim the otherwise-invisible beam. One challenge for such multidisciplinary teams is communicating to different members how they can tackle a problem, he says. Biologists often struggle to understand what questions mathematical models can ask concerning the large data sets generated in cancer research — sets that include not only genomic and proteomic sequences, but also imaging results and environmental information from medical records. It’s important that there’s someone in the group who understands which statistical methods are best applied to particular types of data, and what the results do and don’t show, says Pratx.

On the flip side, he thinks that engineers can focus too much on trying to come up with innovative techniques, and are sometimes less interested in applying what others have already developed. It’s not enough for insights gleaned from data to be new, he says. They also have to be biologically relevant.

One problem that Pratx sees is the one Stover experienced. Although the growth in data is increasing the need for computational specialists in cancer research, the competition from other fields for people with those skills is strong.

Matchmakers

Early-career researchers interested in forming collaborations need to network with people from other fields, and one obvious way is to attend conferences in those fields. But Jennifer Podesta, a molecular biologist and a specialist in the use of nanotechnology for drug delivery, says that simply attending a conference isn’t enough. “Do a little bit of homework, and go in very much with an agenda of ‘who it is I want to meet and what do I want to get out of it?’” she says. “It’s remarkable how many people think they can show up, scrunch over and stand in the corner, and come away from it complaining that they didn’t meet a collaborator.”

Podesta, who runs the Cancer Research UK Centre at Imperial College London, recommends working out the type of scientist you need for the project you have in mind, and then approaching department heads in your own university to see who they think might fit. Funding managers also tend to have a broad knowledge of which researchers have what expertise, and are usually happy to play matchmaker.

Getting funding for cross-disciplinary projects can be challenging, especially for someone who hasn’t yet established a reputation, so Podesta suggests looking for small sums of money internally, to fund a pilot project with a new collaborator. Such projects demonstrate that members of the team can work together and produce viable ideas, making them more attractive to funding agencies. The NCI’s Physical Sciences in Oncology programme provides funding specifically for pilot projects.

Trying to keep up with a field as dynamic as cancer research is daunting. “We have so much information within our reach, and new discoveries are being made every day,” Adalsteinsson says. The key to tackling all that information, Pratx says, is to overcome the tendency of many scientists to think they need to learn everything themselves. “I think it’s an important skill when you’re able to say, ‘Maybe I don’t need to be an expert in computer modelling. I can maybe work with somebody else,’” he says.

Nature 556 , S1-S3 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-04164-7

This article is part of Nature Spotlight: Cancer , an editorially independent supplement produced with the financial support of third parties. About this content.

Related Articles

Bristol-Myers Squibb

Cancer Research UK

Breast Cancer Now

Fondation Arc Léopold Griffuel Awards

• Conferences and meetings

First pig-to-human liver transplant recipient ‘doing very well’

News 31 MAY 24

Innovative cancer therapies offer new hope

Outlook 29 MAY 24

Advances in highly targeted radiation treatment for cancer have ignited interest in a once obscure field

‘I saw that discrimination wasn’t hearsay or rumours — it really did exist’

Career Q&A 05 JUN 24

Need a policy for using ChatGPT in the classroom? Try asking students

Career Column 05 JUN 24

Why China has been a growing study destination for African students

Nature Index 05 JUN 24

How I overcame my stage fright in the lab

Career Column 30 MAY 24

China promises more money for science in 2024

News 08 MAR 24

One-third of Indian STEM conferences have no women

News 15 NOV 23

Tenured Position in Huzhou University School of Medicine (Professor/Associate Professor/Lecturer)

※Tenured Professor/Associate Professor/Lecturer Position in Huzhou University School of Medicine

Huzhou, Zhejiang (CN)

Huzhou University

Electron Microscopy (EM) Specialist

APPLICATION CLOSING DATE: July 5th, 2024 About the Institute Human Technopole (HT) is an interdisciplinary life science research institute, created...

Human Technopole

Post-Doctoral Fellow in Chemistry and Chemical Biology

We are seeking a highly motivated, interdisciplinary scientist to investigate the host-gut microbiota interactions that are associated with driving...

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Harvard University - Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Postdoc Position (f/m/d) in “Building Healthcare Resilience Against Cyber-Attacks"

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) – The Research University in the Helmholtz Association creates and imparts knowledge for the society and th...

76344, Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen (DE)

Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT) Campus Nord

Research assistant (Praedoc) (m/f/d) - Department of Biology, Chemistry, Pharmacy

Department of Biology, Chemistry, Pharmacy - Institute of Chemistry and Biochemistry AG Absmeier   Research assistant (Praedoc) (m/f/d) with 65%-pa...

14195, Berlin (DE)

Freie Universität Berlin

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

Together we are beating cancer

• Cancer types
• Breast cancer
• Bowel cancer
• Lung cancer
• Prostate cancer
• Cancers in general
• Clinical trials
• Causes of cancer
• Coping with cancer
• Managing symptoms and side effects
• Mental health and cancer
• Money and travel
• Death and dying
• Cancer Chat forum
• Health Professionals
• Cancer Statistics
• Cancer Screening
• Learning and Support
• NICE suspected cancer referral guidelines
• Make a donation
• By cancer type
• Leave a legacy gift
• Donate in Memory
• Find an event
• Race for Life
• Charity runs
• Charity walks
• Search events
• Relay for Life
• Volunteer in our shops
• Help at an event
• Help us raise money
• Campaign for us
• Do your own fundraising
• Fundraising ideas
• Get a fundraising pack
• Return fundraising money
• Fundraise by cancer type
• Set up a Cancer Research UK Giving Page
• Find a shop or superstore
• Become a partner
• Cancer Research UK for Children & Young People
• Our Play Your Part campaign
• Brain tumours
• Skin cancer
• All cancer types
• By cancer topic
• New treatments
• Cancer biology
• Cancer drugs
• All cancer subjects
• All locations
• By Researcher
• Professor Duncan Baird
• Professor Fran Balkwill
• Professor Andrew Biankin
• See all researchers
• Our achievements timeline
• Our research strategy
• Involving animals in research
• Research opportunities
• For discovery researchers
• For clinical researchers
• For population researchers
• In drug discovery & development
• In early detection & diagnosis
• For students & postdocs
• Our funding schemes
• Career Development Fellowship
• Discovery Programme Awards
• Clinical Trial Award
• Biology to Prevention Award
• View all schemes and deadlines
• Applying for funding
• Start your application online
• How to make a successful applicant
• Funding committees
• Successful applicant case studies
• How we deliver research
• Our research infrastructure
• Events and conferences
• Our research partnerships
• Facts & figures about our funding
• Develop your research career
• Recently funded awards
• Manage your research grant
• Notify us of new publications
• Find a shop
• Volunteer in a shop
• Donate goods to a shop
• Our superstores
• Shop online
• Wedding favours
• Cancer Care
• Flower Shop
• Our eBay store
• Shoes and boots
• Bags and purses
• We beat cancer
• We fundraise
• We develop policy
• Our global role
• Our organisation
• Our strategy
• Our Trustees
• CEO and Executive Board
• How we spend your money
• Early careers
• Your development

Cancer News

• For Researchers
• For Supporters
• Press office
• Publications
• Update your contact preferences
• About cancer
• Get involved
• Our research
• Funding for researchers

The latest news, analysis and opinion from Cancer Research UK

• Science & Technology
• Health & Medicine
• Personal Stories
• Policy & Insight
• Charity News
• Science & Technology

At-home saliva test could help diagnose prostate cancer sooner

1 June 2024

A new saliva test for identifying men at high risk of prostate cancer could help find more cases of the disease earlier, when doctors have a better chance of treating it successfully.

The researchers behind the BARCODE 1 study, which we helped fund, say their test could help “turn the tide” on prostate cancer.

Although it is the second biggest cancer killer of men in the UK, taking around 12,000 lives a year, there is no national screening programme for prostate cancer . This is because the only current option, the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test , is too inaccurate.

Instead of measuring the amount of PSA in blood, the new spit test sorts people into groups by looking through the DNA in their saliva samples for a range of small genetic changes linked to prostate cancer. The results of the trial suggest that this approach works better. The men the new test puts in its highest risk group are more likely to have prostate cancer than men with raised PSA levels.

The new test also falsely identified prostate cancer fewer times than the PSA test does, and picked up a higher proportion of aggressive cancers.

“With this test, it could be possible to turn the tide on prostate cancer,” said Ros Eeles, a professor at the Institute of Cancer Research and a consultant at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, which jointly led the research. ”We have shown that a simple, cheap spit test to identify men at higher risk due to their genetic makeup is an effective tool to catch the cancer early.”

Eeles is presenting the results of BARCODE 1 at the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago. She ties her work to a long legacy of research into the genetic markers of prostate cancer.

“Building on decades of research into the genetic markers of prostate cancer, our study shows that the theory does work in practice – we can identify men at risk of aggressive cancers who need further tests, and spare the men who are at lower risk from unnecessary treatments.”

From PSA testing to polygenic risk scoring

In the study, spit samples were used to calculate prostate cancer polygenic risk scores (PRSs) for more than 6,000 European men. All participants were recruited through their GP surgeries when they were between 55 and 69 – an age at which risk of prostate cancer is increased.

Their PRSs were based on 130 genetic variations – many hereditary – shown to be linked with prostate cancer through studies into the DNA of hundreds of thousands of men.

For BARCODE 1, the men with the highest 10% of risk scores were invited to further screening. Following an MRI and a prostate biopsy, 187 of them (40% of the total) were diagnosed with prostate cancer. That’s a significant jump from the 25% of men identified by PSA tests who actually have prostate cancer. Moreover, 147 (78%) of the men diagnosed thanks to the new saliva test had a ‘normal’ PSA level, which would usually indicate that no further screening is required.

The researchers also took a closer look at how the prostate cancers picked up by their new test behaved (which can be assessed by looking at how abnormal they appear, measured by grade ). PSA testing picks up many people who have cancers that grow too slowly to cause any significant health impacts, meaning that men may undergo unnecessary MRI scans, invasive biopsies, and treatments. Importantly, then, the new spit test identified a higher proportion of aggressive cancers – which are fast growing and likely to spread – than the PSA test. Of the 187 cancers detected in BARCODE 1, 55% were aggressive cancers, compared with 36% of those identified by a PSA test in a recent study.

The PRS test is also more accurate than an MRI scan for men who score in the highest 10% for genetic risk.

Naser Turabi, our director of evidence and implementation, put the findings into context.

“Right now, there’s no reliable method to detect aggressive prostate cancer, but this study brings us a step closer to finding the disease sooner in those people who need treatment,” he said. “It’s encouraging to see that genetic testing might help to guide a more targeted approach to screening based on someone’s risk of developing prostate cancer. More research is now needed to confirm if this tool can save lives from the disease so that it can be rolled out to improve diagnosis.”

Since BARCODE 1 started, an international research team has identified more genetic variants associated with prostate cancer risk in men of Asian and African ancestry. The ICR team intend to trial a saliva test for this population to ensure polygenic risk scoring can benefit all men. They are also comparing the saliva test to other potential screening options as part of the ongoing TRANSFORM trial.

This research was funded by the European Research Council, the Bob Willis Fund, Cancer Research UK, The Peacock Trust and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) at The Royal Marsden and The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR).

Amazing news, I pray this will be commercially available soon in Ireland, we are years behind in Ireland with genetic testing.

Does that mean no more biopsies? (Breathes sigh of relief) Uses in detection for other cancers?

fantastic reseach

Excellent Idea as I think many men are embarrassed I feel it would stop a lot of worry

This hopefully a game changer and fully on board. Unfortunately men are simply not being heard or seen by there GP , just simply not good enough four week wait, zero to do with covid, many many people young old falling through the inadequacy’s from all cancers.

I would like to thank you so very much for this amazing research you are carrying out. I personally have had prostate cancer but I was treated successfully if this can save more men from dying from this horrible disease it is a truly life changing moment.

If test preliminary test need to be rolled out to a larger test group, I’d be happy to take part. To many men die unnecessarily due to this cancer so this is a great step forward.

The sooner we adopt this method of screening in the UK then the better for all men, regardless of age or ethnicity. I expect the UK won’t be adopting this screening method for at least 5 years because of all the “usual” red tape plus demands for lengthy UK based clinical trial to validate it’s efficacy and worth to the NHS.

Tell us what you think

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Read our comment policy .

Highlighted content

Thousands of nhs patients to access trials of personalised cancer 'vaccines', sarah harding's legacy: finding women who may have higher breast cancer risks, asco 2024: data on weight loss drugs and a melanoma vaccine, a test that can predict breast cancer relapse, and more, general election 2024: what does this mean for the tobacco and vapes bill, skin cancer cases reach all-time high, an animal's guide to staying safe in the sun, hpv vaccine slashes cervical cancer rates across society, one to one with penny: volunteering special 1 - that cancer conversation podcast, the ‘mystery’ culprit causing kidney cancer worldwide, related topics.

• Cancer Research UK-funded research
• Early detection
• Diagnosing cancer
• The Institute of Cancer Research
• Cancer in the news

Together we are beating cancer

About cancer

Cancer types

• Breast cancer
• Bowel cancer
• Lung cancer
• Prostate cancer

Cancers in general

• Clinical trials

Causes of cancer

Coping with cancer

• Managing symptoms and side effects
• Mental health and cancer
• Money and travel
• Death and dying
• Cancer Chat forum

Health Professionals

• Cancer Statistics
• Cancer Screening
• Learning and Support
• NICE suspected cancer referral guidelines

Get involved

• Make a donation

By cancer type

• Leave a legacy gift
• Donate in Memory

Find an event

• Race for Life
• Charity runs
• Charity walks
• Search events
• Relay For Life
• Volunteer in our shops
• Help at an event
• Help us raise money
• Campaign for us

Do your own fundraising

• Fundraising ideas
• Get a fundraising pack
• Return fundraising money
• Fundraise by cancer type
• Set up a Cancer Research UK Giving Page
• Find a shop or superstore
• Become a partner
• Cancer Research UK for Children & Young People
• Our We Are campaign

Our research

• Brain tumours
• Skin cancer
• All cancer types

By cancer topic

• New treatments
• Cancer biology
• Cancer drugs
• All cancer subjects
• All locations

By Researcher

• Professor Duncan Baird
• Professor Fran Balkwill
• Professor Andrew Biankin
• See all researchers
• Our achievements timeline
• Our research strategy
• Involving animals in research

Funding for researchers

Research opportunities

• For discovery researchers
• For clinical researchers
• For population researchers
• In drug discovery & development
• In early detection & diagnosis
• For students & postdocs

Our funding schemes

• Career Development Fellowship
• Discovery Programme Awards
• Clinical Trial Award
• Biology to Prevention Award
• View all schemes and deadlines

Applying for funding

• Start your application online
• How to make a successful application
• Funding committees
• Successful applicant case studies

How we deliver research

• Our research infrastructure
• Events and conferences
• Our research partnerships
• Facts & figures about our funding
• Develop your research career
• Recently funded awards
• Manage your research grant
• Notify us of new publications

Find a shop

• Volunteer in a shop
• Donate goods to a shop
• Our superstores

Shop online

• Wedding favours
• Cancer Care
• Flower Shop

Our eBay store

• Shoes and boots
• Bags and purses
• We beat cancer
• We fundraise
• We develop policy
• Our global role

Our organisation

• Our strategy
• Our Trustees
• CEO and Executive Board
• How we spend your money
• Early careers

Cancer news

• Cancer News
• For Researchers
• For Supporters
• Press office
• Publications
• Update your contact preferences

ABOUT CANCER

GET INVOLVED

NEWS & RESOURCES

FUNDING & RESEARCH

You are here

Identifying your target audience

To get the most out of involving patients in your research it’s important to identify people relevant to your research. Think about what experiences and skills will add the most value to your project.

Identifying the personal experiences needed

The focus of your research and the questions you want to ask patients will help you figure out what personal experiences are beneficial. Personal experience could be:

• Having a personal diagnosis of cancer
• Being a carer for someone with cancer
• Length of time from diagnosis
• Cancer type
• Treatment type

Identifying personal experiences relevant to your research could look like:

• Your research is looking at side effects of chemotherapy in breast cancer patients. So, you may want to talk to women who have had breast cancer and had chemotherapy within the last 5 years.
• You’re looking at the acceptability of your trial protocol and the readability of your informed consent documents. So, you may want to talk to some people who have undergone a similar clinical trial in the past.

The personal experience of the people you involve may influence the involvement method you use. For example, patients who are undergoing treatment might not be able to attend a full day focus group.  But they may be able to do a telephone interview or survey.

Identifying the skills and expertise needed

The method of involvement will help you think about what skills are important so that the people you involve can contribute effectively.

Identifying the right skills for your involvement method could look like:

• You're recruiting patient representatives for your steering group so would like to involve someone who has experience working as part of a group.
• You’re interested in what additional patient involvement could add value to your research. So, you may want to talk to patients with experience of patient involvement in research.
• You're writing a blog about your research to a lay audience. So, you may want to involve people who have no experience of working in research or science.

Making your involvement diverse and inclusive

Involving a diverse range of people can bring rich insights to your work. Look for where you can seek diverse views within the personal experiences and skills necessary for your research.

It can be tempting to always involve the same people who are well known to your research institute. Patients who get involved regularly can become great ‘patient experts’. This can be very valuable for some involvement opportunities, but not all. It’s important that you involve people with the experiences and skills most relevant to your research, to get the most out of the involvement. It’s important to use fair and transparent recruitment processes as per the INVOLVE National Standards.

To find out more about diversity and inclusion in patient involvement use the INVOLVE strategies for diversity and inclusion .

NEWS... BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT

‘Landmark’ cancer jabs offer hope to thousands of NHS patients

Share this with

A man with bowel cancer has become the first of thousands of people in England to be treated with a personalised jab for the disease on the NHS .

Health leaders hailed the treatment as ‘a landmark moment’ for patients and the NHS.

Officials said many more people are expected to be recruited to take part in vaccine trials for various forms of cancer in the coming years as part of the new scheme.

The first patient to receive the vaccine for bowel cancer was Elliot Pfebve, 55, who was diagnosed with the disease after a routine health check with his GP.

After having a 30cm tumour removed from his large intestine, he was referred to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham for chemotherapy and to take part in the clinical trial.

The father-of-four, who is a higher education lecturer, said: ‘Taking part in this trial tallies with my profession as a lecturer, and as a community-centred person.

‘I want to impact other people’s lives positively and help them realise their potential.

‘Through the potential of this trial, if it is successful, it may help thousands, if not millions, of people, so they can have hope and may not experience all I have gone through. I hope this will help other people.’

The vaccine was created using mRNA technology and is being jointly developed by biopharmaceutical companies BioNTech and Genentech.

It works by looking for specific mutations in a patient’s tumour, with clinicians using the information to create a personalised treatment.

The jab is designed to stimulate a patient’s immune system after surgery to remove tumours so it can recognise and attack any remaining cancer cells.

Dr Victoria Kunene, a consultant clinical oncologist at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham and principal investigator for the trial, said: ‘The investigational cancer vaccines are based on mRNA and are created by analysing a patient’s tumour to identify mutations specific to their own cancer.

‘Using this information, we can create an individualised investigational cancer vaccine. It is too early yet to say if these will be successful, though we are extremely hopeful.’

The trial that Mr Pfebve took part in is one of several that will be taking place at NHS trusts across the country.

It forms part of NHS England’s Cancer Vaccine Launch Pad, which is working to fast-track patients to get vaccines at the earliest opportunity.

People who wish to take part will have a blood test and tissue sample taken. If they are eligible, they will be referred to the nearest NHS hospital involved in the scheme.

Thirty hospitals in England are signed up to the initiative, with more to join in the coming months.

According to NHS England, the scheme will work with a range of pharmaceutical companies and could expand to include patients with other cancers such as pancreatic and lung cancer.

NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard said: ‘Seeing Elliot receive his first treatment as part of the Cancer Vaccine Launch Pad is a landmark moment for patients and the health service as we seek to develop better and more effective ways to stop this disease.

‘Thanks to advances in care and treatment, cancer survival is at an all-time high in this country, but these vaccine trials could one day offer us a way of vaccinating people against their own cancer to help save more lives.

‘Our national match-making service will ensure as many eligible patients as possible get the opportunity to access them.’

Professor Peter Johnson, national clinical director for cancer at the NHS, said: ‘We know that even after a successful operation, cancers can sometimes return because a few cancer cells are left in the body, but using a vaccine to target those remaining cells may be a way to stop this happening.’

Iain Foulkes, executive director of research and innovation at Cancer Research UK, said: ‘It’s incredibly exciting that patients in England are beginning to access personalised cancer vaccines for bowel cancer.

‘Clinical trials like this are vital in helping more people live longer, better lives, free from the fear of cancer.

‘If successful, the vaccine will be a game changer in preventing the onset or return of bowel cancer.’

Last month, a trial began for the country’s first skin cancer jab .

MORE : Emmerdale real-life couple in tears as co-stars brand them an ‘inspiration

MORE : Mum died feet from newborn son’s cot when her brain suddenly ‘switched off’

MORE : Pensioner’s brush with UK’s ‘most dangerous plant’ still hurts 50 years later

Sign Up for News Updates

Get your need-to-know latest news, feel-good stories, analysis and more.

Privacy Policy

Get us in your feed

Melanoma skin cancer cases at all-time high in UK

Cases of melanoma are up across all age groups, but particularly among the elderly, according to new analysis. Cancer Research UK says 17,000 cases each year are preventable.

By Amelia Harper, news correspondent

Monday 27 May 2024 03:22, UK

Melanoma skin cancer cases in the UK are at an all-time high, with 20,800 people expected to be diagnosed this year.

Cancer Research UK says rates of melanoma - skin cancer that can spread - have increased by almost a third over a decade.

Rates have increased from 21 to 28 per 100,000 people between 2007-2009 and 2017-2019.

New analysis has found the upward trend in cases can be seen across all ages, but the biggest rise has occurred in adults over 80 - a 57% rise in cases over the past decade.

In those aged 25 to 49, there was a 7% increase.

Cancer Research UK said around 17,000 melanoma cases every year are preventable, with almost nine in 10 caused by too much ultraviolet (UV) radiation.

UV from the sun, or sunbeds, can damage DNA in skin cells and cause skin cancer.

The charity advises people spend time in the shade, especially between 11am and 3pm; cover up with clothes, a wide-brimmed hat, UV-protection sunglasses and a sunscreen with at least SPF 30 and 4 or 5 stars, applied often.

One of those diagnosed with skin cancer, after spotting a tiny blemish above her knee, is Shrewsbury postmistress Caroline Jones.

Ms Jones first visited her GP after spotting a tiny mole-like blemish on her leg in July 2018.

She told Sky News: "I noticed a tiny but strange mole-type thing, about half the size of a penny, just above my knee on my right thigh and decided I ought to get it checked at the doctors."

The 57-year-old, who is all too familiar with the dangers of cancer after her mother died aged just 49, is urging people to get their skin checked if concerned.

She said: "I sat in the waiting room looking at the pictures on the wall and I could see that my skin looked just like one of the photographs - flat and shiny and black in the middle.

"My mum died of breast cancer when she was just 49 and here was I, aged 52. I honestly thought I was going to die."

The biopsy found it was cancerous two weeks later, before Ms Jones had the mole removed without needing further treatment.

Cancer Research UK's chief executive, Michelle Mitchell, said: "Survival from cancers including melanoma continues to improve, demonstrating the substantial progress made possible by research.

"But it's vital that people try to reduce their risk of getting the disease in the first place.

"Make sure to take care in the sun and contact your GP if you notice any unusual changes to your skin - whether a new or changing mole, a sore that doesn't heal, or an area of your skin that looks out of the ordinary.

"Spotting cancer early can make all the difference."

More people surviving

Figures from the charity show, however, that more people are surviving melanoma, with deaths expected to continue to fall.

Almost nine in 10 adults diagnosed with melanoma in England will now survive their disease for a decade or more.

According to the charity, younger people are more aware of the link between the sun and skin cancer than those who are older, who may have taken advantage of the "cheap package holiday boom" from the 1960s onwards.

Other factors driving up cases include a growing and ageing population and improved awareness of the symptoms of skin cancer.

Read more: Too many patients waiting too long for cancer treatment, data shows Proteins in blood 'could warn of cancer seven years before diagnosis'

Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News

Dr Claire Knight, senior health information manager at Cancer Research UK, said: "Getting sunburnt just once every two years can triple the risk of developing skin cancer, compared to never being burned."

Last month, experts told how the world's first personalised mRNA cancer jab for melanoma , which also has the potential to stop lung, bladder and kidney cancer, is being tested in British patients.

The "gamechanger" jab, which offers hope of a cure, is custom-built for each person in just a few weeks.

A stage-2 trial of the jab, involving pharma firms Moderna and MSD, found it dramatically reduced the risk of the cancer returning in melanoma patients.

A final phase-3 trial is now running, led by University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH).

Be the first to get Breaking News

Install the Sky News app for free

Related Topics