Teams Tackle Key Questions in Cancer Research

Three research teams will collectively receive around $75 million to investigate novel treatments for inflammation-associated cancers, different molecular drivers in various tissues, and the link between the microbiome and colorectal cancer. The funding was awarded by Cancer Research UK (CRUK) in its second “Grand Challenge” competition, a program designed to fund international research teams tackling some of the biggest problems in cancer research.

The Grand Challenge was conceived by CRUK in 2015 as a way of enabling scientists to move beyond specific, project-based questions to pursue broader questions in cancer research. “There really aren't that many opportunities for scientists to come together across international boundaries and across disciplines to work on really big, important problems,” says Iain Foulkes, executive director of Research and Innovation at CRUK. The Grand Challenge is “defining the most important challenges in cancer research on a scientific level, and then bringing the best minds together to solve them.”

In creating the program, CRUK decided to open the competition to scientists anywhere in the world working in any discipline in academia or industry—with few limits on how the money is used once it is awarded. This year, 134 teams, representing 41 countries and 513 institutions, applied for an award.

One winning team seeks to understand how inflammation drives cancers. To do this, they will analyze how stromal cells in the extracellular matrix contribute to tumorigenesis and create comprehensive maps of tissue–tissue interactions. The researchers will study how the stroma might be reprogrammed to develop new treatments.

A second team aims to explore why certain mutations cause cancers in specific tissues. They will build integrated datasets based on functional genome screens of healthy organs, genomic studies of cancer-causing mutations, and in vivo models of tissue-specific mutational pathways. They will then use the datasets to explore which mutations underlie which cancers and identify novel therapeutic targets.

Finally, a third group wants to delve into the relationship between the gut microbiome and colorectal cancer. Researchers will map and model interactions between the microbiota and tumor cells, gather epidemiologic and genomic data from healthy and at-risk individuals, and investigate how the microbiomes of patients with colorectal cancer influence their response to therapy—and develop microbiota-targeted therapies.

“[We] saw the Grand Challenge call and their specific interest around the microbiome, which is a field we've both thought about for quite some time, and we thought that now is the time to deeply define the role of the microbiota in colorectal cancer,” explains Wendy Garrett, MD, PhD, of the Harvard School of Public Health, who is co-leading the project with Matthew Meyerson, MD, PhD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, all in Boston, MA. She says the Grand Challenge program is unique in its scale and its emphasis on international collaboration: Her team includes 13 research groups from the United States, the UK, Canada, the Netherlands, and Spain.

As for Foulkes, the main charge of the Grand Challenge to the winning teams is simple: “Go see where the science takes you.” –Catherine Caruso