Founded | 4 February 2002 |
---|---|
Type | Charitable organisation |
Registration no. |
|
Focus | Cancer research Health policy |
Location |
|
Coordinates | 51°32′33″N0°00′43″W / 51.5426°N 0.0119°W |
Patron | The King |
Key people | Michelle Mitchell (CEO) Charles Swanton (Chief Clinician) Ketan J. Patel (Chief Scientist) |
Revenue | £719 million (2022/23) [1] |
Employees | 4591 (2023) [1] |
Volunteers | 25,000 (2023) [1] |
Website | https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/ |
Formerly called | Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) The Cancer Research Campaign (CRC) |
Cancer Research UK (CRUK) is the world's largest independent cancer research organisation. [2] [3] It is registered as a charity in the United Kingdom [1] and Isle of Man, and was formed on 4 February 2002 by the merger of The Cancer Research Campaign and the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. [4] Cancer Research UK conducts research using both its own staff and grant-funded researchers. It also provides information about cancer and runs campaigns aimed at raising awareness and influencing public policy. [5] [6] [7]
The organisation's work is almost entirely funded by the public. It raises money through donations, legacies, community fundraising, events, retail and corporate partnerships. Over 25,000 people are regular volunteers. [1]
The Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) was founded in 1902 as the Cancer Research Fund, changing its name to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in 1904. It grew over the next twenty years to become one of the world's leading cancer research charities. [8] Its executive committee was chaired by Sir William Church from its inception in 1902 until 1923. [9] Its flagship laboratories formerly at Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, and Clare Hall, Hertfordshire, and known as the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute, are now part of the Francis Crick Institute. [2]
The British Empire Cancer Campaign (BECC) was founded in 1923, and initially drew a hostile response from ICRF and the Medical Research Council, who considered it a rival. [8] [10] "The Campaign", as it was colloquially known, became a very successful and powerful grant-giving body. In 1970, the charity was renamed The Cancer Research Campaign (CRC). [10]
Incorporated on 20 November 2001, [11] the two organisations officially merged on 4 February 2002 to form Cancer Research UK, the largest independent cancer research organisation in the world (the largest, the National Cancer Institute, is funded by the US Government). [12] [13] At the time of the merger, the ICRF had an annual income of £124m, while the CRC had an income of £101m. [12]
Based on article share during the period between January 2015 to August 2019, Nature listed Cancer Research UK in the top 150 of the Top 200 institutions in cancer research in the world. [14]
CRUK had an income of £718,793,138 and expenditure of £640,845,146 for the financial year ending in 31 March 2023. [15]
On 30 April 2024, King Charles III was announced as patron of the charity. [16]
In the financial year 2014/15, the charity spent £422.67 million on cancer research projects (67% of its total income for that year). The bulk of the remaining costs were spent on trading and fundraising costs with a small amount spent on information services, campaigning, advocacy, administration and other activities or was held in reserve. [1]
Around 40% of its research expenditure (27% of its total spending) is on basic laboratory research into the molecular basis of cancer . [17] The remainder supports research into over 100 specific cancer types, focusing on drug discovery and development; prevention, early detection and imaging; surgery and radiotherapy; and cancers where survival rates are still low, such as oesophageal, lung and pancreatic cancers. [18]
The charity funds the work of over 4,000 researchers, doctors and nurses throughout the UK, supports over 200 clinical trials and studies cancer and cancer risk in over a million people in the UK. [19]
The charity participates in numerous citizen-science projects including:
The charity funds networks in seven locations across the UK, to drive collaborations between universities, NHS hospitals, and other research organisations. Centre status is awarded to locations performing the highest quality cancer research, to provide funds for equipment and training. [28] Centre status has been designated to:
Drugs developed by the organisation's scientists include:
Several of the organisation's scientists have won major prizes, including:
Through Cancer Health UK, a website written in Plain English, it provides information on cancer and cancer care, and a unique clinical trials database. [4] A team of nurses provides a confidential telephone service, the Cancer Chat forum provides a place for users to talk to others affected by cancer, and mobile cancer awareness units deliver health information to locations of high cancer incidence and mortality. It provides statistical information via the Cancer Stats section. It also provides publications for the public to order and download.
Cancer Research UK publishes a twice-monthly professional medical journal, the British Journal of Cancer . [38]
The charity worked to bring about the smoking ban in England and continues to campaign for further action on smoking. [39] The charity lobbies for better screening programmes and advises on access to new cancer medicines.
Income sources include:
On 18 July 2012, it was announced that Cancer Research UK was to receive its largest single donation of £10 million from an anonymous donor. The money went towards the £100 million funding for the Francis Crick Institute in London. [42]
During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, CRUK closed its shops and cancelled mass participation fundraising events. They predicted that this, coupled with economic uncertainty affecting people's ability or willingness to donate, would lead to a 30% fall in income that year and a reduction in income lasting at least 3 years. [43]
In June 2011, Cancer Research UK was one of several health charities (along with the British Heart Foundation, the Alzheimer's Society and Parkinson's UK) targeted by the animal rights organisation Animal Aid in a series of advertisements in British newspapers urging members of the public to stop giving donations to organisations that fund medical research involving animal experiments. [44] [45]
In April 2017, the Information Commissioner's Office fined eleven charities that breached the Data Protection Act by misusing donors’ personal data. Cancer Research UK was fined £16,000. [46]
The University of Manchester is a public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester City Centre on Oxford Road. The university owns and operates major cultural assets such as the Manchester Museum, The Whitworth art gallery, the John Rylands Library, the Tabley House Collection and the Jodrell Bank Observatory – a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The University of Manchester is considered a red brick university, a product of the civic university movement of the late 19th century. The current University of Manchester was formed in 2004 following the merger of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) and the Victoria University of Manchester. This followed a century of the two institutions working closely with one another.
The Medical Research Council (MRC) is responsible for co-coordinating and funding medical research in the United Kingdom. It is part of United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI), which came into operation 1 April 2018, and brings together the UK's seven research councils, Innovate UK and Research England. UK Research and Innovation is answerable to, although politically independent from, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
The Institute of Cancer Research is a public research institute and a member institution of the University of London in London, United Kingdom, specialising in oncology. It was founded in 1909 as a research department of the Royal Marsden Hospital and joined the University of London in 2003. It has been responsible for a number of breakthrough discoveries, including that the basic cause of cancer is damage to DNA.
The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, United Kingdom. It was established in 1936 with legacies from the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome to fund research to improve human and animal health. The aim of the Trust is to "support science to solve the urgent health challenges facing everyone." It had a financial endowment of £29.1 billion in 2020, making it the fourth wealthiest charitable foundation in the world. In 2012, the Wellcome Trust was described by the Financial Times as the United Kingdom's largest provider of non-governmental funding for scientific research, and one of the largest providers in the world. According to their annual report, the Wellcome Trust spent GBP £1.1 billion on charitable activities across their 2019/2020 financial year. According to the OECD, the Wellcome Trust's financing for 2019 development increased by 22% to US$327 million.
Sir Paul Maxime Nurse is an English geneticist, former President of the Royal Society and Chief Executive and Director of the Francis Crick Institute. He was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with Leland Hartwell and Tim Hunt, for their discoveries of protein molecules that control the division of cells in the cell cycle.
Sir David Philip Lane is a British immunologist, molecular biologist and cancer researcher. He is currently working in the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology at the Karolinska Institute and is Chairman of Chugai Pharmabody. He is best known for the discovery of p53, one of the most important tumour suppressor genes.
The Cancer Research UK London Research Institute (LRI) was a biological research facility which conducted research into the basic biology of cancer.
John Gordon McVie was an international authority on the treatment and research of cancer. He wrote over 350 peer-reviewed articles, editorials and books. McVie was born in Glasgow, Scotland and died of non-Hodgkin lymphona and COVID-19 in Bristol, England.
Tomas Robert Lindahl is a Swedish-British scientist specialising in cancer research. In 2015, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly with American chemist Paul L. Modrich and Turkish chemist Aziz Sancar for mechanistic studies of DNA repair.
The School of Biological Sciences is a research-led academic community at the University of East Anglia. It works with partners in industry on a range of activities, including translating research discoveries into products, making knowledge and research expertise available through consultancies, contract research and provision of analytical services, as well as partnering industry in training both undergraduate and postgraduate students.
The Francis Crick Institute is a biomedical research centre in London, which was established in 2010 and opened in 2016. The institute is a partnership between Cancer Research UK, Imperial College London, King's College London (KCL), the Medical Research Council, University College London (UCL) and the Wellcome Trust. The institute has 1,500 staff, including 1,250 scientists, and an annual budget of over £100 million, making it the biggest single biomedical laboratory in Europe.
Sir Tony Kouzarides, FMedSci, FRS is a senior group leader Gurdon Institute, a founding non-executive director of Abcam and a Professor of Cancer Biology at the University of Cambridge.
Sir Peter John Ratcliffe, FRS, FMedSci is a British physician-scientist who is trained as a nephrologist. He was a practising clinician at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford and Nuffield Professor of Clinical Medicine and head of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine at the University of Oxford from 2004 to 2016. He has been a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford since 2004. In 2016 he became Clinical Research Director at the Francis Crick Institute, retaining a position at Oxford as a member of the Ludwig Institute of Cancer Research and director of the Target Discovery Institute, University of Oxford.
The Edinburgh Cancer Research Centre (ECRC), also known as the University of Edinburgh Cancer Research Centre, is a center for basic, translational and clinical cancer research located in Edinburgh, Scotland. ECRC constitutes a part of the Institute of Genetics & Molecular Medicine (IGMM) and is positioned in direct proximity of the Western General Hospital, where most of its clinical activities take place.
The Christie, formerly known as Christie Hospital and The Christie Hospital and Holt Radium Institute, is a specialist National Health Service oncology hospital in Manchester, England. It is one of the largest cancer treatment centres in Europe. It is managed by The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, which as of 2024 had a turnover of £472 million and around 3,500 staff, and its work is also supported by The Christie Charity.
Sir James Cuthbert Smith is an Emeritus Scientist at the Francis Crick Institute, Honorary Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge and President of the Council at the Zoological Society of London.
Ian Jacobs is an academic, medical doctor, gynaecological oncologist, charity founder and university leader from the UK, with dual British and Australian citizenship.
Richard Malcolm Marais a British researcher who is Director of the Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Manchester Institute and Professor of Molecular Oncology at the University of Manchester.
Sir Richard Henry Treisman is a British scientist specialising in the molecular biology of cancer. Treisman is a director of research at the Francis Crick Institute in London.
Robert Charles Swanton is a British physician scientist specialising in oncology and cancer research. Swanton is a senior group leader at London's Francis Crick Institute, Royal Society Napier Professor in Cancer and thoracic medical oncologist at University College London and University College London Hospitals, co-director of the Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Lung Cancer Centre of Excellence, and Chief Clinician of Cancer Research UK.