Five Global Teams Awarded $125 Million to Take on the Toughest Challenges at the Frontiers of Cancer Science
BOSTON--( BUSINESS WIRE)--Cancer Grand Challenges, a global initiative co-founded by the National Cancer Institute in the US and Cancer Research UK, today announced a major $125m commitment to propel cancer research into uncharted territory. Five pioneering international teams will each receive up to $25m over approximately five years to tackle some of the most ambitious and unanswered questions in cancer.
Bringing together a global coalition of the world’s leading scientists, funders and philanthropists, Cancer Grand Challenges enables bold, long-term collaboration to pursue disruptive ideas that could open entirely new routes for cancer prevention, detection, and treatment. This latest investment matches the previous record $125m funding round and brings the total support for the initiative to $624m since 2016.
The five new teams will take on bold, ambitious challenges in cancer research — from harnessing natural immunity to cancer and triggering cancer cells to self-destruct, to revealing hidden proteins in cancer cells, uncovering unknown causes of DNA damage and exploring how manipulating the brain’s own signals might be used to fight tumors. The 2026 funding has been awarded to:
Cancer Grand Challenges Scientific Committee Vice-Chair, Dr Judy Garber, said:
“These new global teams of scientists are tackling questions many would consider too difficult or too ambitious. By bringing together expertise from across the cancer research space, Cancer Grand Challenges is enabling the kind of collaborative science that has the potential to address these truly “grand challenges” and to actually to change how we prevent, detect and treat cancer worldwide.”
Director of Cancer Grand Challenges, Dr David Scott, said:
“Achieving impact at this scale is only possible because of the commitment of our co-founders Cancer Research UK and the US National Cancer Institute, together with our coalition of visionary funding partners who share our mission to transform the landscape of cancer research. Their support enables truly bold, high-risk science that wouldn’t be possible through traditional funding routes. By backing this new set of uniquely ambitious challenges, they are helping drive breakthroughs that could redefine how we think about, study, treat, and prevent cancer.”
US National Cancer Institute Deputy Director, Dr Dinah Singer, said,
“Solving cancer’s toughest problems requires scientific courage and collaboration. Through Cancer Grand Challenges, we are empowering teams to pursue innovative ideas that may reshape our understanding of how cancer begins, evolves and responds to treatment.”
“This partnership reflects CGC’s commitment to supporting transformative research that pushes beyond conventional boundaries and accelerates progress for patients in the United States and around the world.”
Launched in 2020, Cancer Grand Challenges takes a unique approach to collaboration, uniting the brightest minds from across the world and across disciplines to form global teams who pursue answers to some of the biggest questions facing cancer research and the treatment of people with cancer today.
Already, the initiative is reshaping how we think about, study, prevent and treat cancer. In less than a decade, past teams have transformed our understanding of how genetic mutations drive cancer, opened new therapeutic avenues and changed the way we think about tumor evolution and treatment resistance, developed cutting-edge tools to map tumors in three dimensions, revealed the complexity of the role of the microbiome in colorectal cancer, and uncovered clues as to why some early breast lesions develop into full cancers while others do not.
The Cancer Grand Challenges community has grown to more than 1,800 researchers and collaborators with 21 teams from across the world taking on 18 challenges. In this round, the funded teams span 34 institutions in 9 countries, and will add a further 42 senior investigators to the Cancer Grand Challenges community.
Teams selected for Cancer Grand Challenges awards will use that support over the next five years to address the challenge, carry out research, publish peer-reviewed findings, share data widely, and work toward advancing understanding or new approaches in their challenge area.
To make this round possible, Cancer Grand Challenges has received funding from the Bowelbabe Fund for Cancer Research UK, Cancer Research Institute, Children Cancer Free Foundation (KiKa), KWF Dutch Cancer Society, Torrey Coast Foundation, and Yosemite (oncology-focused venture firm), which are each co-funding one of the new teams. Some teams are supported by more than one partner, reflecting the collaborative nature of this funding round.
For more information on teams, team members and their approach to tackling these challenges, visit https://cancergrandchallenges.org/.
Notes to editor
Team ATLAS is led by Dr Paul Bastard at Institut Imagine (INSERM & University of Paris).
Team InteroCANCEption is led by Dr Leanne Li at the Francis Crick Institute.
Team REWIRE-CAN is led by Professor Bart Vanhaesebroeck at the UCL Cancer Institute, University College London.
Team ILLUMINE is led by Professor Reuven Agami at the Netherlands Cancer Institute.
Team CAUSE is led by Dr Ludmil Alexandrov at the University of California San Diego.
The Selection Process
Every two years, Cancer Grand Challenges consults the global research community through a series of workshops, thinktanks, and discussions with patient advocates, inviting them to share their perspectives on the greatest obstacles standing in the way of vital progress. The Cancer Grand Challenges Scientific Committee, comprising some of the world's most eminent researchers, then meets to discuss and debate the ideas and recommends a set of complex challenges that it believes can be solved.
International teams are then invited to propose bold, interdisciplinary research projects designed specifically to tackle these challenges, with the successful teams announced the following year.
Combining Ambition and Innovation
Cancer Grand Challenges employs a unique funding approach centered on challenges, motivating researchers from diverse backgrounds to surpass conventional limits of geography and discipline. These challenges represent persistent obstacles hindering progress in cancer research, which no single scientist, institution, or country can tackle in isolation.
The Cancer Grand Challenges community has grown to more than 1,800 investigators and collaborators with 21 teams from across the world taking on 18 challenges.
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 US National Cancer Institute, Cancer Grand Challenges supports a global community of interdisciplinary, 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 £20M, 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
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.
About the National Cancer Institute