World Cancer Day 2019
United against cancer
Today is World Cancer Day- an initiative led by the Union for International Cancer Control that marks a day on which the entire world can unite in the fight against cancer. In 2018, 18 million people globally were diagnosed with cancer, and in the UK alone, more than 360,000 people are diagnosed with cancer each year. Annually, 9.6 million people around the world lose their lives as a result of cancer, and experts predict that this number will rise to 13 million by 2030 if we don’t act now.
Advances in research have seen survival for certain cancers in the UK double in the last 40 years. Cancer Research UK (CRUK) are now working towards their goal of 3 in 4 people surviving cancer by 2034, and as a CRUK Centre of Excellence and partner in the CRUK City of London Centre, we are committed to help accelerate progress towards this goal.
Collaboration is key
Our researchers work with scientists from around the world and from a variety of different disciplines. This collaboration of intelligent minds and varied expertise increases the tools available to drive cancer research forward.
Here are some examples of our international research projects:
The Accelerator Award
In September 2018, BCI researchers became lead members of an international team funded by an Accelerator Award. The award, funded through a partnership between CRUK, AIRC and FC AECC, brings together researchers from the UK, Spain and Italy, encouraging cross-institutional collaboration to unite resources and expertise to accelerate progress in cancer research.
The award will support research to improve early detection and intervention of blood cancers, which are collectively the third largest cause of cancer mortality in the UK. In order to advance early detection and treatment of blood cancers, the team (led by Prof Jesus San Miguel, Director of Clinical and Translational Medicine at the University of Navarra, Spain) endeavours to develop tools to detect, purify and characterise cells at the premalignant and minimal residual disease stages.
Read out more about the Accelerator Award here.
'ACE' Research Centre
Professor Trevor Graham, Lead of the Evolution and Cancer Biology Laboratory, is part of Arizona State University (ASU)’s research centre called ‘ACE’ (the Arizona Cancer Evolution Centre). ACE will serve as one of 13 research hubs within the National Cancer Institute (NCI)’s Cancer Systems Biology Consortium (CSBC). ACE’s mission is to advance the fundamental understanding of cancer and its clinical management through the development and application of evolutionary and ecological models to cancer biology.
ACE will bring together leading researchers from a variety of institutions nationwide, including ASU, the University of Southern California, Queen Mary University of London, the University of California, Santa Barbara, the University of Zurich, The Institute of Cancer Research (London), the University of Utah, Stanford University and North Carolina State University.
Find out more here.
STORMing Cancer- CRUK Grand Challenge Team
Dr Stuart McDonald is a co-investigator in a pioneering team, called STORMing Cancer, which was announced in January as one of the winning teams of CRUK’s Grand Challenge award.
Led by Professor Thea Tlsty from the University of California, San Francisco, STORMing Cancer brings together scientists from the U.S., Canada, the UK and Israel. The team aims to discover how chronic inflammation promotes the development of cancer and identify novel ways to prevent cancer developing in high-risk patients with chronic inflammatory diseases.
Find out more about the work of STORMing Cancer here.
Cancer research breaks boundaries to unite researchers from diverse disciplines from all countries around the world. It is this united approach that will allow us to continue to tackle the biggest challenges in cancer research and help us to beat cancer sooner.
See updates from World Cancer Day on Twitter by following #WorldCancerDay.
Category: General News
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