ACCELERATING PROGRESS THROUGH COLLABORATION ACCELERATOR AWARD CASE STUDIES

CRUK CENTRES’ NETWORK

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At Cancer Research UK we recognise the crucial role that infrastructure plays in creating a dynamic and responsive research environment. Our 13 Centres and five Institutes form a unique network, facilitating multidisciplinary translational research of the highest international quality and training the next generation of clinicians and researchers.

Our Centres drive local partnerships and high-calibre collaborations between universities, NHS trusts and other cancer charities under a united strategy to accelerate the translation of research into the clinic.

With an annual budget of over £41m, the network delivers this through:

• Core funding in excess of £29 million per annum, supporting a network of 13 Centres, covering infrastructure, salaries, seed funding and running expenses

• Training funding of up to £12m per annum

• Our Accelerator Award.

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THE ACCELERATOR AWARD

PREVIOUSLY FUNDED PROJECTS

Since we launched the Accelerator Award in 2015 we have funded ambitious research projects spanning diverse research areas, modalities and cancer sites. The theme common to all the projects described in this booklet is their collaborative approach to accelerating progress, drawing together resources and expertise which will deliver impact that could not be achieved in isolation.

LOOKING FORWARD

In 2017 we formed a new funding partnership with the Fundación Científica de la Asociación Española Contra el Cáncer (FC AECC, the principal cancer research charity in Spain) and the Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro (AIRC, the principal cancer research charity in Italy). The partnership will facilitate access to a wide pool of expertise and resources, encouraging international collaboration across Spain, Italy and the UK.

The Accelerator Award provides a simple mechanism to support researchers and clinicians to collaborate more closely on large scale translational research projects regardless of location.

It supports the development of high-quality resources (including training programmes) that will accelerate progress in translational research through the creation of collaborative international networks.

The Award provides up to £1m per annum over five years and supports:

• Technical staff

• Project management staff

• Academic appointments

• Consumables

• Equipment

• Training

• Networking costs.

The outputs will be available to the wider scientific community to stimulate further research through additional leveraged funding.

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ACCELERATOR AWARD CASE STUDIES

AWARD TITLE

A NATIONAL DIGITAL PATHOLOGY AND IMAGE ANALYSIS PLATFORM FOR SOLID TUMOURS

THE FRANCIS CRICK INSTITUTE: CLINICAL TRAINING AWARD

DRUG DISCOVERY USING A NETWORKED STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY RESOURCE

CANCER IMMUNOTHERAPY CATALYST NETWORK

INTERNATIONAL GLIOMA CELLULAR GENETICS RESOURCE

ADVANCED RADIOTHERAPY TECHNOLOGIES NETWORK (ART-NET)

SUCCESS DETERMINANTS AND MECHANISMS OF TUMOUR IMMUNOTHERAPY

A NATIONAL POST-MORTEM TISSUE COLLECTION PROTOCOL (THE PEACE STUDY)

LUNG CANCER CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE

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A NATIONAL DIGITAL PATHOLOGY AND IMAGE ANALYSIS PLATFORM FOR SOLID TUMOURS

This £4.0m Award, led by the Queen’s University Belfast, will establish standardised, quantitative methods of tissue and cellular imaging analysis in molecular pathology, to enhance the discovery of diagnostic and therapeutic biomarkers in solid cancers.

The consortium will:

• Build digital analysis platforms and promote knowledge exchange, particularly between the hub of immunology expertise in Southampton and the hub of molecular pathology expertise in Belfast

• Invest in the next generation of molecular pathologists by developing a Masters in Molecular Pathology course and funding a clinical research training programme

Principal Investigator: Professor Manuel Salto-Tellez (Belfast)

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NEWCASTLE

MANCHESTER

LONDON

SOUTHAMPTON

London

University College London Institute of Cancer Research

EDINBURGH

BELFAST

THE FRANCIS CRICK INSTITUTE: CLINICAL TRAINING AWARD

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This £4.2m Award, led by the Francis Crick Institute, aims to build capacity in experimental cancer medicine through training the next generation of cancer scientists.

Principal Investigator: Professor Richard Treisman (Francis Crick Institute)

The programme will:

• Develop a unique clinical research fellow training programme in collaboration with five major research institutions in London: Barts Cancer Institute, Institute of Cancer Research, Imperial College London, King’s College London and University College London. This will deliver support to researchers working on molecular archeology, cancer immunotherapy, and targets for ovarian cancer therapies

• Support the annual Crick Cancer Meeting, which will facilitate cross-collaboration within and outside of the immediate network

London

The Francis Crick Institute King’s College London

Queen Mary University London

University College London Imperial College London

Institute of Cancer Research

LONDON

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DRUG DISCOVERY USING A NETWORKED STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY RESOURCE

This £1.8m Award, led by the University of Leicester, will establish a virtual structural biology resource to improve target validation for drug development, generating high quality data and accelerating research in personalised medicine.

The consortium will:

• Enhance access to equipment for and provide expertise in protein production, biophysics, fragment screening, computational chemistry and structural biology research across the network

• Coordinate the range of facilities and expertise available to provide a comprehensive resource for target validation

• Share best practice and help to standardise protocols

• Host workshops and symposia to build capacity, promote networking and train future researchers

Professor Richard Bayliss (Leeds)

Principal Investigators: Professor Mark Carr (Leicester)

BELFASTNEWCASTLE

LONDON

London

Institute of Cancer Research

GLASGOW

MANCHESTERLEEDS

LEICESTER

CANCER IMMUNOTHERAPY CATALYST NETWORK

This £5.0m Award, led by the CRUK UCL Centre, investigates the monitoring of patients being treated with immunotherapies, to identify mechanisms and markers of response, resistance and toxicity.

The consortium will also research pre-clinical novel therapies, such as adoptive cellular therapies, to help get them to the clinic.

The two teams will work together to create new immunotherapies and validate potential targets and combinations.

Principal Investigators: Professor Henning Walczak (UCL)

The consortium will:

• Establish a state-of-the-art immune-monitoring and discovery hub, which will provide a comprehensive assessment of patient response (using cytometry, immunohistochemistry, genomics, proteomics and bioinformatics)

• Build a basic research team to develop mechanistic insights and meaningful prognostic and diagnostics markers

• Build a translational research team skilled in cancer immunotherapeutics, biotherapeutic production and T-cell engineering

• Support a training programme in immuno-oncology clinical trials to upskill the next generation of scientists and clinicians to develop, interpret and deliver relevant trials for immunotherapies

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London

The Francis Crick Institute Barts Cancer Institute

University College London Institute of Cancer Research

King’s College London

LONDON

We have the opportunity to get an unprecedented level of genetic and molecular detail, enabling us to create a complete catalogue of the different types of brain tumours. Dr Steven Pollard

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INTERNATIONAL GLIOMA CELLULAR GENETICS RESOURCE

This £3.7m Award, led by the CRUK Edinburgh Centre, will develop new, open-access resources for brain cancer research through the generation of glioblastoma (GBM) cell lines and diverse cellular models.

The consortium will:

• Develop centralised infrastructure for the generation, cataloguing and curation of glioblastoma cell lines

• Develop standardised, high quality, primary human cellular GBM models across different subtypes as well as normal stem cell controls

• Develop genome editing core facilities and novel engineered human patient-derived cellular models

• Develop an open-source database for the glioma community

• Support a training programme that will be co-supervised by developmental neurobiologists at the Francis Crick Institute

London

The Francis Crick Institute University College London

Institute of Cancer Research Queen Mary

University London

Principal Investigator: Dr Steve Pollard (Edinburgh)

LONDON

EDINBURGH

We’d like to see radiotherapy becoming more targeted so we can give bigger doses in fewer treatments.Professor Kevin Harrington

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ADVANCED RADIOTHERAPY TECHNOLOGIES NETWORK (ART-NET)

Principal Investigator: Professor Kevin Harrington (ICR)

The consortium will:

• Establish a national cooperative around these technologies

• Create a digital platform to enable adaptive treatment planning and protocol development

• Assess the health economics of new treatment approaches against existing care

• Support a training programme investing in the next generation of radiation oncologists

This £4.3m Award, led by the CRUK ICR Centre, will optimise and harmonise the use of three new radiotherapy technologies (Stereotactic Ablative Radiotherapy, MR-Linac and Proton Beam Therapy) as they transition into the clinic.

LEEDS

LONDON

OXFORD

London

University College London Institute of Cancer Research

MANCHESTER

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SUCCESS DETERMINANTS AND MECHANISMS OF TUMOUR IMMUNOTHERAPY

This £3.9m Award, led by the CRUK Southampton Centre, will enable researchers to monitor patients with melanoma, lung and oesophageal cancers being treated with immunotherapeutics to determine how the tumours are recognised in vivo and influenced by immunotherapy. This aims to inform the rational design of immunotherapies, as well as evaluate how patients are likely to respond to treatment and who will benefit most.

Principal Investigator: Professor Tim Elliot (Southampton)

The consortium will:

• Combine the expertise in cancer immunotherapy in Southampton and the experience in single cell genomics and basic immunology in Oxford

• Support an international collaboration with the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology, based in California, which will perform micro-scaled transcriptomatic analysis of samples

We hope to be able to come up with ways to predict how likely any given immunotherapy is to help a patient.Professor Tim Elliott

La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology,

California

SOUTHAMPTON

OXFORD

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A NATIONAL POST-MORTEM TISSUE COLLECTION PROTOCOL (THE PEACE STUDY)

Principal Investigator: Professor Charles Swanton (UCL/Francis Crick)

This £4.0m Award, led by the CRUK UCL Centre, will support the longitudinal collection of biological samples from patients with primary brain or metastatic cancer across the UK, including after their death. Sample collection will comprise tissue, blood, cell-free DNA and circulating tumour cells.

The consortium will:

• Coordinate and standardise sample collection across the network

• Create a digital pathology hub from the samples

• Train clinical researchers in autopsy pathology

This will create a unique resource of samples, supported by clinical annotation, to investigate through research initiatives such as understanding the evolution of cancer, intratumour heterogeneity, mechanisms of resistance, as well as identification of prognostic and diagnostic markers.

BELFAST

CAMBRIDGE

London

The Francis Crick Institute University College London

GLASGOW

LEICESTER

LONDON

ST ANDREWS

MANCHESTER

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THE PEACE STUDY – A PATIENT’S PERSPECTIVE

The roll-out of this study will give patients a choice to contribute to research after their death. Maggie Wilcox, a retired nurse from Surrey and breast cancer survivor, is a patient advocate with the Independent Cancer Patient Voice for the PEACE trial.

As a cancer survivor, I understand that a cancer diagnosis can be very stressful for the patient and their families. And doctors and families are often hesitant to talk about contributing a patient’s body to research after death.

But I think it’s important to give the patient a choice to contribute to research that will help save others’ lives. And often patients are a lot tougher than they may seem. It’s an opportunity to create something positive out of a difficult experience. I hope one day that donating tissue after death is as normal as donating blood.

Maggie Wilcox

LUNG CANCER CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE

In June 2014, we awarded £2.5m over three years for a Lung Cancer Centre of Excellence. The Centre, which is a partnership between researchers at University of Manchester and University College London, was established to provide a focal point for our ambition to improve lung cancer survival.

The award will enable the Centre to:

• Provide leadership to the UK and international lung cancer research community in basic, translational and clinical research

• Develop infrastructure to support translational and clinical research

• Establish a critical mass for lung cancer research in the UK

• Train the next generation of lung cancer researchers

Leads: Professor Caroline Dive (University of Manchester) and Professor Charles Swanton (UCL)

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For more information please visit cruklungcentre.org

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Cancer Research UK Angel Building, 407 St John Street, London EC1V 4AD, UK

T: +44(0)20 7242 0200cruk.org/science@CRUKresearch

For more information: Dr Sarah BrownResearch Funding ManagerT: +44 (0)203 469 6779Sarah.Brown@cancer.org.uk

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