CRUK Invests £15 Million in Research Hubs

London-based Cancer Research UK (CRUK) has earmarked £15 million (about $23.4 million) over the next 2 years to create three major centers to coordinate priority projects across its research network. The initiative is aimed at translating laboratory discoveries into innovative early-detection and personalized treatment strategies.

CRUK's programs based at the Universities of Cambridge, Manchester, and Oxford will receive £5 million (about $7.8 million) each over 2 years on top of existing annual funding of between £3 million and £4 million (between about $4.7 million and $6.2 million) each. The centers will act as hubs of research in areas of strategic importance to CRUK, and will facilitate collaboration among investigators across CRUK's 15 centers.

“We are substantially increasing funding to develop more comprehensive centers with the expertise, infrastructure, and technology required to deliver translational research at the highest international level,” says David Scott, PhD, CRUK's director of Discovery Research and Centers. “We hope to increase the level of investment in these locations over the next few years as research activity ramps up.”

At Cambridge, the new funding will support development of early-detection techniques for different cancers, says Scott. Investigators are also building a brain cancer program under the direction of Richard Gilbertson, MD, PhD, who most recently served as director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, TN.

In Manchester, researchers will establish a national center to discover biomarkers for early detection, clinical decision-making, and monitoring treatment, says Scott. The center already has expertise in circulating tumor cells (CTC), and investigators there published findings last year showing that CTCs could be used to monitor small-cell lung cancer and predict response to treatment (Nat Med 2014;20:897–903). In addition, the Manchester center has partnered with the CRUK center at University College London to establish a Center of Excellence in lung cancer.

Researchers at Oxford's Clinical Imaging and Radiation Oncology Hub are exploiting insights from basic biology to improve radiotherapy. For example, they recently published findings suggesting that giving AKT inhibitors in combination with radiotherapy might improve the response to radiotherapy in p53-deficient tumors (J Clin Invest 2015;125:2385–98).

“We think of this new funding as a way to bridge the gap between the lab and the clinic,” says Scott. “It's providing the infrastructure, such as data managers, biobanking, and platforms, to profile tumors at the molecular level—the things that enable translational research.”

Such discovery is critical given that the 10-year survival rate in the UK for all cancers is about 50%. “We'd like to see that increase to at least 75% over the next 20 years,” Scott says.

For more news on cancer research, visit Cancer Discovery online at http://CDnews.aacrjournals.org.