Cancer Research Initiative Announces Funding for Global Research Community to Take on Nine of Cancer’s Toughest Challenges

From cancer inequities to understanding the rise in early-onset cancers, international research teams are invited to apply for up to $25M each in funding

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cancer Grand Challenges, a research initiative co-founded by Cancer Research UK and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), today announced nine new challenges for the global research community to take on – representing obstacles that continue to impede progress against cancer and, ultimately, benefits for patients.

Cancer Grand Challenges unites the world's brightest minds across boundaries and disciplines to tackle cancer's most complex challenges. In support of Cancer Grand Challenges, Cancer Research UK is building a global network of partners, including the Dutch Cancer Society, The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research and Scientific Foundation of the Spanish Association Against Cancer. To date, $270M has been invested, reflecting a shared commitment to supporting innovative, cross-discipline efforts to advance cancer research.

The Challenges

Each of the nine Cancer Grand Challenges are obstacles that no one scientist, institution, or country can solve alone:

• Solid tumors in children: Develop therapeutics to target oncogenic drivers of solid tumors in children
  • This challenge seeks to identify new therapies that target drivers of solid tumors in children to improve survival and reduce the lifelong side effects caused by existing treatments.
• Cancer inequities: Understand the mechanisms through which genetics, biology, and social determinants affect cancer risk and outcomes in diverse populations to motivate interventions to reduce cancer inequities
  • This challenge seeks to understand the relative contributions of genetics, biology and social drivers on cancer causes to provide foundational knowledge that could be used to develop novel approaches to reduce cancer inequities and disparities.
• Obesity, physical activity and cancer: Determine the mechanisms through which obesity and physical activity influence cancer risk
  • This challenge seeks to understand the biological processes by which obesity and physical activity impact cancer risk to better inform the development of interventions to alter risk.
• Aging and cancer: Decipher the functional basis underlying the association between aging somatic tissues and cancer
  • This challenge seeks to understand how the molecular changes associated with aging contribute to cancer risk in different organs. This knowledge could be used to develop new targeted interventions to lower cancer risk in aging populations.
• T-cell receptors: Decipher the T-cell receptor cancer-recognition code
  • This challenge aims to improve our understanding of how T cells, a type of immune cell, recognize cancer cells, to improve and broaden the success of cancer immunotherapies.
• Early-onset cancers: Determine why the incidence of early-onset cancers in adults is rising globally
  • This challenge aims to understand the mechanisms underpinning the biological and environmental factors behind the rise in early-onset cancers, diagnosed in adults under 50 years of age, so that this knowledge can be used to ultimately develop interventions to protect populations at risk.
• Cancer cell plasticity: Understand cancer cell plasticity and its contribution to the development of pan-therapeutic resistance in cancer
  • This challenge seeks to expand our understanding of how cancer cells can change their identity by adopting the characteristics of different cells, which can contribute to cancer progression and therapy resistance, and how this could be regulated to improve the effectiveness of cancer therapies.
• Retrotransposable elements: Understand the roles of retrotransposable elements in cancer
  • This challenge seeks to understand how retrotransposable elements (which are parts of our DNA that come from viruses that infected us millions of years ago and can jump to different locations in our DNA), contribute to the development and progression of certain types of cancers.
• Chemotherapy-induced neurotoxicities: Understand and prevent chemotherapy-induced neurotoxicity and neuropathy
  • This challenge seeks to better understand how some chemotherapies cause particular side effects, such as long-term damage to the nervous system, ultimately to better inform approaches to prevent and treat these to improve patients’ quality of life.

“Determining what becomes a Cancer Grand Challenge is a rigorous process. We have evaluated many opportunities and selected a set of nine new challenges that we hope will energize the global research community,” said Professor Sir David Lane, chair of the Cancer Grand Challenges Scientific Committee. “Our global challenge-based model brings together the scientific community, helping them to rise above the traditional boundaries of geography and discipline to change outcomes for people with cancer.”

The Challenge Selection Process

Every two years, Cancer Grand Challenges invites the global research community, patient advocates and people affected by cancer to submit their views on the greatest obstacles standing in the way of making vital progress against cancer. The Cancer Grand Challenges Scientific Committee, comprising some of the world's most eminent researchers, then meets to discuss and debate the ideas submitted and recommends a set of complex challenges that it believes can be solved.

International teams are then invited to apply for funding to support innovative, interdisciplinary research to solve them, with the successful teams announced the following year.

“Advances in cancer research are driven by scientific creativity and collaboration, two core tenets of Cancer Grand Challenges,” said Dr. Dinah S. Singer, Ph.D., NCI Deputy Director for Scientific Strategy and Development. “Our investment and support of these new challenges is built on the principle that by uniting a global research community, we will make progress against cancer that the world urgently needs.”

“Cancer is a major global problem that requires global collaboration. Cancer Grand Challenges provides an unparalleled opportunity for the world’s scientific community to come together and make change”, said Dr. David Scott, Director of Cancer Grand Challenges. “Our initiative inspires new thinking – bringing together world-class, interdisciplinary teams to find bold, new solutions to cancer’s most complex problems.”

Call for Teams

Expressions of Interest are now open. Cancer Grand Challenges is inviting international research teams to apply and receive up to $25M in funding to take on one of the nine new challenges. The deadline to apply is June 22, 2023. Shortlisted teams will be announced in August 2023.

For more information on the newly announced challenges, visit cancergrandchallenges.org/new-challenges-2023

About Cancer Grand Challenges

Co-founded in 2020 by two of the largest funders of cancer research in the world: Cancer Research UK and the National Cancer Institute, Cancer Grand Challenges supports a global community of diverse, world-class research teams to come together, think differently and take on some of cancer’s toughest challenges. These are the obstacles that continue to impede progress, and no one scientist, institution, or country will be able to solve them alone. With awards of up to $25M, Cancer Grand Challenges teams are empowered to rise above the traditional boundaries of geography and discipline to make the progress against cancer we urgently need.

About Cancer Research UK

• Cancer Research UK is the world’s leading cancer charity dedicated to saving lives through research, influence and information.
• Cancer Research UK’s pioneering work into the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer has helped save millions of lives.
• Cancer Research UK has been at the heart of the progress that has already seen survival in the UK double in the last 40 years.
• Today, 2 in 4 people survive their cancer for at least 10 years. Cancer Research UK wants to accelerate progress and see 3 in 4 people surviving their cancer by 2034.
• Cancer Research UK supports research into the prevention and treatment of cancer through the work of over 4,000 scientists, doctors and nurses.
• Together with its partners and supporters, Cancer Research UK is working towards a world where people can live longer, better lives, free from the fear of cancer.

For further information about Cancer Research UK's work or to find out how to support the charity, please call 0300 123 1022 or visit www.cancerresearchuk.org. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.