Novel cancer research projects launched

Cancer Research UK has announced the winners of its inaugural Grand Challenge competition, which aims to help researchers overcome the biggest issues in cancer research today.

The four winning projects will enable scientists to better prevent, diagnose and treat cancer in the future. Assembled of international multidisciplinary teams, the projects received a combined £71m of funding.

Sir Harpal Kumar, Cancer Research UK’s (CRUK) chief executive, said: “CRUK set up the Grand Challenge awards to bring a renewed focus and energy to the fight against cancer. We want to shine a light on the toughest questions that stand in the way of progress. We’re incredibly excited to be able to support these exceptional teams as they help us achieve our ambition.”

The four selected projects are:

• Professor Mike Stratton, from the Wellcome Trust Sanger will lead a team studying cancer samples from five continents to understand DNA damage associate with different cancers. It is hoped this will help researchers understand what causes them and how they can be prevented.
• Distinguishing between women with ductal carcinoma in situ – a condition that can develop into breast cancer – who require treatments and those that do not. This will aim to reduce overtreatment of this condition. This will be led by Dr Jelle Wesseling from the Netherlands Cancer Institute.
• Dr Josephine Bunch, from the NPL, will lead a project aiming to has develop a method to combine both new and existing technologies to create virtual representations of tumours, which could lead to new diagnoses and treatments and
• The creation of a virtual reality 3D tumour map which can allow scientists and doctors to examine both the cellular and molecular make up of a patient’s entire tumour. Led by Professor Greg Hannon, at the University of Cambridge, this will involve researchers from Europe and the US.

More than 200 institutes applied to the Grand Challenge, established in 2015. The Grand Challenge is comprised of seven problems posed by CRUK.

The challenges are:

• Develop vaccines to prevent non-viral cancers.
• Eradicate EBV-induced cancers from the world.
• Discover how unusual patterns of mutation are induced by different cancer-causing events.
• Distinguish between lethal cancers that need treating, and non-lethal cancers that don’t.
• Find a way of mapping tumours at the molecular and cellular level.
• Develop innovative approaches to target the cancer super-controller MYC.
• Deliver biologically active macromolecules to any and all cells in the body.

Dr Rick Klausner, chair of the Grand Challenge advisory panel said: “When we began the Grand Challenge we sought scientific adventurers – people willing to come together in new ways, to think differently, and bring novel approaches to answer the big questions in cancer. These unique teams have done just that.”

Phase Two of the Grand Challenge will launch this summer, along with a set of revised challenges

More information can be viewed here www.cruk.org/grandchallenge

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