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Cancer Mission

Updated 16 October 2024

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What we do

Cancer was identified as one of the key healthcare missions in the 2021 Life Sciences Vision. Cancer is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the UK, responsible for 25% of all UK deaths in 2021. One in two people born after 1960 are expected to be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime.

The Cancer Mission aims to make the UK a leading testbed for oncology innovation by accelerating the development and commercialisation of a new generation of cancer diagnostics and therapeutics, allowing patients to be diagnosed earlier and offered therapies specifically designed to target their cancer. Launched in November 2022 and backed by £22.5 million of government funding, the Cancer Mission will support research to develop new immune-based cancer therapies (including cancer vaccines), as well as technologies that enable earlier, more effective cancer diagnosis.

To date the Mission has:

  • Launched the £12 million NIHR Invention for Innovation (i4i) and OLS Cancer Mission: Early Cancer Diagnosis Clinical Validation and Evaluation Call. This competition, delivered in collaboration with the NIHR i4i programme, aims to support the clinical validation and evaluation of breakthrough technologies that can increase the proportion of cancers which are detected earlier in the disease course and/or target health inequalities in stage of cancer diagnosis.
  • Contributed towards the second round of Innovate UK’s Advancing Precision Medicine funding competition. This contribution will co-fund a portfolio of cancer projects, aiming to develop digital and data enabled tools, as well as multi-modal approaches, for more accurate cancer diagnosis and treatment stratification.
  • Launched the Cancer Immunotherapy Response Research Platform (CIRRP) funding call, co-funded and delivered by MRC, which will make available up to £9 million over 4 years for a multi‑disciplinary consortium to develop a broad utility platform aimed at generating insights into patient response, adverse effects, and resistance to cancer immunotherapies. The consortium will also be supported to carry out one or more exemplar project(s) to demonstrate the platform’s utility, with a view to generating actionable insights into immunotherapies.

Who we are

The Cancer Mission is chaired by Professor Peter Johnson.

Cancer remains a leading cause of life years lost and of public concern. We see a rapidly-expanding range of opportunities to find cancers at an earlier stage and to bring new types of treatment to bear through working with partners in the Life Sciences, and the Cancer Mission has enhanced collaboration between industry and the research ecosystem of the NHS as its primary goal.

Professor Peter Johnson, October 2023.

Peter Johnson Cancer Mission Chair.

Peter Johnson is a Professor of Medical Oncology at the University of Southampton and Honorary Consultant in Medical Oncology at University Hospital Southampton NHS Trust. He has been the NHS England National Clinical Director for Cancer since 2019. Prior to this he was Director of the Francis Crick Institute Cancer Research Network (2017-2019) and Chief Clinician at Cancer Research UK (2008-2017). He has a career in academic oncology and extensive publication record spanning over 25 years with research interests in lymphoma and expertise in immuno-oncology. In 2018 he established one of the first dedicated centres for cancer immunology in the UK in Southampton. In May 2023, Peter Johnson was appointed the UK government Cancer Mission Chair to lead delivery of the Life Sciences Cancer Mission.

Contact details

You can contact the Cancer Mission by email:healthcaremissions@officeforlifesciences.gov.uk.

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