Join our campaign to

Unlock Cancer Breakthroughs

In the UK, around 1,100 people are diagnosed with cancer every day¹ – each relying on progress in cancer research to deliver better treatments, tests, and outcomes.

But right now, research in the UK is being held back.

Avoidable delays to setting up clinical trials and challenges in attracting researchers from around the world are slowing progress, while risks to long-term, protected investment threaten to stall momentum even further.

This means that new treatments and innovations are taking too long to reach patients, costing people affected by cancer time and hope they can't afford to lose. We cannot let this continue.

Add your name to join the campaign and help call on the UK Government to remove the barriers holding back research and unlock more cancer breakthroughs.

What changes need to happen?

With the number of cancer diagnoses at a record high, we need to unlock more of what cancer research can achieve. To do this, governments across the UK must:

Unlock faster clinical trials

Clinical trial set up times in the UK are unnecessarily slow, held back by complex trial set-up processes and not enough staff and resources to carry out research. For cancer patients and their families, every delay to a clinical trial is a delay to hope. The longer it takes to develop, test, and get approval for a new test or treatment, the longer it takes to see the impact in the health system for people affected by cancer. Governments across the UK must take action to address the barriers slowing down commercial and non-commercial trial set up, by streamlining set-up processes and improving workforce capacity to deliver research – so that life-saving tests and treatments can reach patients faster.

Unlock global talent

The UK is home to world-class researchers and, at Cancer Research UK, we are developing the UK’s cancer research leaders of tomorrow by supporting scientists and clinical academics at every stage of their careers. When the best minds around the world come together, breakthroughs happen faster. But a complex and costly immigration system is holding this back, delaying vital research that could be improving cancer outcomes. The Home Office must reduce immigration costs for researchers and work with Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology, HM Treasury, and the Department for Business and Trade to deliver clear messaging around attracting the best researchers, so the UK is in the best position to power the next big discoveries.

Unlock investment

Thanks to decades of cancer research, cancer survival has doubled since the 1970s in the UK, but this rate of improvement has slowed over time. Making continued progress in cancer research is essential to changing this trajectory. Breakthroughs in cancer research rely on decades of sustained effort and investment – when investment into research slows, so does the progress we are making. Despite this, of all publicly funded cancer research in the UK, only around 31% comes from government, while 66% comes from charities. While recent UK Government commitments to research and development are welcome, we need governments across the UK to commit to long-term, protected increases in research funding in all four nations – to boost the economy and make sure that people affected by cancer, today and in the future, can benefit from cancer breakthroughs.

What is a breakthrough?

Breakthroughs are new discoveries that could help us beat cancer. Right now, our researchers are making discoveries that could change how we prevent, diagnose and treat cancer.

Cancer Research UK is a vital part of the UK’s research ecosystem. We carry out world-class research into more than 200 types of cancer through the work of more than 4,000 scientists, doctors and nurses.

Cancer Research UK has invested over £4 billion into cancer research over the last decade. We aim to invest more than £1 billion into research over the next three years.

¹Cancer Research UK. https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/statistics-by-cancer-type/all-cancers-combined

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