World Cancer Research Day: our new research projects

Today is World Cancer Research Day!

The UK is being overshadowed by other similar nations when it comes to survival, as we’ve shared in our recently published Blood Cancer Action Plan.

This is why we are committed to funding ground-breaking research that will help save even more lives.

Today we are proud to announce we are funding 8 new research projects, across many different types of blood cancer including leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma, taking our total number of research projects to 87 across the UK.

🧪 Dr Lisa Russell and her team at University of Newcastle want to understand more about the role genes play in how ALL develops. They want to use this information to help find drugs that could specifically target ALL cancer cells.

Find out more about Dr Lisa Russell's project🔎

🧪 Professor Anastasios Karadimitris and his team at Imperial college London are researching a new treatment for myeloma that uses special immune cells. They hope this could lead to a new treatment for multiple myeloma that is more effective than current treatments.

Find out more about Professor Anastasios Karadimitris's project🔎

🧪 Professor Tom Milne at University of Oxford wants to find out why drugs that block a protein called menin only work for some people with leukaemia. They want to use this information figure out how to make these drugs effective for more people with leukaemia.

Find out more about Professor Tom Milne's project🔎

🧪 Professor Pavel Tolar at University College London are researching how receptors on the surface of B cells influence lymphoma growth. This could help them develop new targeted treatments with fewer side-effects for these types of blood cancers.

Find out more about Professor Pavel Tolar's project🔎

🧪 Professor David Kent and co-lead Dr Rasha Rezk at University of York want to test a new tool that examines the differences that exist between normal blood cells and cancerous blood cells. The hope is that this could lead to the development of new technology that could be used on a bigger scale in hospitals to treat people with leukaemia.

Find out more about Professor David Kent's project🔎

🧪 Dr Claire Roddie and her lab group at University College London are researching to understand why CAR-T cell therapy is an effective treatment for some people with blood cancer but doesn't work well for everyone. They hope to make this treatment more effective, reducing the severe side effects experienced by some.

Find out more Dr Claire Roddie's project🔎

🧪 Professor Ming Du at University of Cambridge wants to understand more about why some people with DLBCL don’t respond well to current treatments. He wants to create a more personalised approach to treatment so these people can be given alternative treatment options.

Find out more about Professor Ming Du's project🔎

🧪 Professor Tariq Enver at University College London is trying to find out more about how childhood B-ALL develops. The hope is that researchers can then use this information to stop this cancer from developing or find better ways to treat it.

Find out more about Professor Tariq Enver's project🔎

Thanks to your support we will continue to fund even more world-class research going forward to take blood cancer out of the shadows and increase survival in the UK.