NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and The Institute of Cancer Research

Background Every day in the UK, over 1,000 people of all ages are diagnosed with cancer. More than half will die from this devastating disease. Many survive with long-term effects that can reduce their quality of life. Also, cancer does not affect everyone equally.

Some people and groups are more vulnerable, some are less likely to access modern medical innovations, and some are more likely to die from cancer. The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust (RM) is rated outstanding by the NHS regulator.

The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) is the only UK academic institution solely devoted to the understanding of cancer.

Together, we have a long history of driving research that changes NHS care and practice, tackling the inequalities and challenges of cancer.

Our vision Improved outcomes for everyone at risk of and affected by cancer across the UK; through development of new approaches to prevention, more accurate and earlier diagnosis, and bespoke therapies, underpinned by smart use of data and technology. Through our BRC award we will: Ensure public and patient voices are heard in everything we do.

Develop new ways of diagnosing and treating patients and make sure that everyone in the UK can benefit from our discoveries as quickly as possible.

Bring together data collected across the NHS to improve how we diagnose and treat people at risk of and affected by cancer.

Work closely with companies, universities, NHS organisations and charities to test the best ideas, consolidating the UK as a global cancer research powerhouse. Our research will tackle the most important cancer challenges: Cancer is not always caught early enough.

We will develop ways to identify people who would benefit from regular check-ups to detect cancer earlier and faster, and prevention approaches tailored to individuals. There are over 200 cancer types that can affect each patient differently. We will develop new cancer medicines and offer them to the right patient at the right time.

This includes immunotherapies which use the patient s immune system to fight and cure advanced cancer. Within each patient, cancers evolve and adapt in response to treatment. This is the main reason why cancer medicines stop working for some people. We will develop and use blood tests and other ways to easily monitor how cancers change and resist treatment.

This will allow us to adapt treatments accordingly. We will also develop new treatments to prevent or overcome treatment resistance.

Surgery and radiotherapy offer patients the best opportunity to cure cancer that has not spread around the body and even for cancers that have started to spread.

We will use the latest technologies to further improve these treatments and develop new medicines delivered as injections. Treatments can cause serious long-lasting side-effects. We will use our understanding of biology to find ways to ease or prevent these so that patients can recover faster. Activity across the entire cancer journey generates vast amounts of valuable data.

To better diagnose and treat patients, we will analyse data with new tools such as artificial intelligence (AI).