We’re investing £37.5 million over the next five years to fund seven UK clinical trials units (CTUs).
From October 2023 the funding will enable clinical teams to deliver innovative and high impact research that improves the care and outcomes for people affected by cancer across the UK and globally.
The units will be in the University of Birmingham, University College London, The Institute of Cancer Research, University of Southampton, University of Leeds, King’s College London and University of Oxford.
“This core network of CTUs co-ordinates the design and delivery of multi-centre trials and drives innovative trials for patient benefit, such as CONCORDE, ALLTogether-1 and BEST4,” said Dr Catherine Elliott, Director of Research and Partnerships at Cancer Research UK. “The CTUs bring together experts in designing, conducting and analysing clinical trials to accelerate delivery of new treatments for patients with cancer and those at risk of developing it”
The network brings together expertise across different research areas and trial types. For example, the Birmingham Clinical Trials Unit specialises in paediatric clinical trials and designs and coordinates 90% of all Cancer Research UK-funded clinical trials in children and young people. The Cancer Prevention Trials Unit at King’s College London specialises in prevention, diagnosis and screening studies. We have also awarded seed-funding to a new unit at the University of Oxford, which will specialise in setting up precision prevention and early detection research.
To ensure that we continue to fund ground-breaking clinical research, we award funding on a regular basis following a review of all CTUs to determine continued funding and allow applications from new units.
Our CTUs are always interested in hearing from academics and clinicians who have an idea for a cancer clinical trial and would like to work with a CTU to develop it. If you are interested in developing a clinical trial with us, you should approach individual CTUs or research groups.