Type of Cancer

Why treatment?

We’ve made incredible progress in treating cancer over the past few decades. Doctors now have a huge array of treatments at their disposal, from radiotherapy and surgery, to chemotherapy and immunotherapy, which would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. In the 1970s, 1 in 4 people in the UK survived their cancer for 10 years or more. Now, that figure is 1 in 2. This progress is, in part, due to the huge improvements we’ve made in treating cancer.

However, we know that cancer is a very complex disease. We also know that existing treatments don’t work for everyone. Many people will be diagnosed with cancer when it has already progressed, which means that treatment options are more limited. Cancer can evolve and become resistant to treatments. And some existing treatments can have severe side effects, reducing people’s quality of life.

We therefore need to continue to fund research in this vital area, to find new cancer treatments and make existing treatments kinder and more effective. Treating cancer is one of our key priorities in our new research strategy

Bladder cancer is the 11th most common cancer in the UK, with around 10,200 new cases each year. Current survival rates show that 46% of people survive their diagnosis for 10 years or more in England.

Research happening right now

We’re developing a better, kinder way to detect bladder cancer.

Current tests to detect bladder cancer are invasive, uncomfortable and expensive. We urgently need new ways of diagnosing this disease.  

Mr Richard Bryan’s team in Birmingham is running a clinical trial called Inform-Bladder. This trial is investigating whether a urine test can detect bladder cancer. This test could not only spare some patients from invasive tests but also potentially detect the disease earlier when treatments are more likely to be successful. 

This trial could lead to better experiences for people going through checks for bladder cancer, encouraging more people to seek help and saving more lives. 

Bowel cancer is the 4th most common cancer in the UK, with around 42,300 new cases each year. Current survival rates show that 53% of people survive their diagnosis for 10 years or more in England.

Research happening right now

We're trialling aspirin as a bowel cancer treatment. 

We’re jointly funding Add-Aspirin, a large international clinical trial that aims to find out if aspirin could stop or delay certain types of cancer from coming back. 

Led by Professor Ruth Langley in London, the trial will help researchers work out who is most likely to benefit from aspirin, and who is at risk of its side effects.

This cheap and readily available drug could improve survival for people who have had cancer before, by giving them the best chance of it not returning in the future. 

Brain tumours is the 9th most common cancer in the UK, with around 12,100 new cases each year. Current survival rates show that 12% of people survive their diagnosis for 5 years or more in England.

Research happening right now

We’re helping more children survive brain tumours.

Professor Richard Gilbertson is director of our CRUK Cambridge Centre and the CRUK Children’s Brain Tumour Centre of Excellence. 

A world-leading expert in childhood brain tumours, Professor Gilbertson is seeking to improve survival for children.

So far, he and his team have found that childhood brain tumours are not a single disease. Now, they want to study the biology in even more detail.

Their research will help to match new treatments to the biology of a child's brain tumour.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women in the UK, with around 55,200 new cases each year. Current survival rates show that 76% of people survive their diagnosis for 10 years or more in England.

Research happening right now

We’re looking for new ways to treat breast cancer.

Cancer cells in breast cancer can be caused by errors that occur in their DNA when cells divide. This results in the activation of the immune system to fix this damaged DNA. 

Dr Kienan Savage has discovered that there is another way the immune system can be activated in response to damaged DNA. He is investigating exactly how this works and which molecules are involved in the process.  

Dr Savage hopes to manipulate this immune response to encourage our bodies to target the cancer cells and provide an alternative treatment option for people with breast cancer. 

Why prevention?

Around 4 in 10 UK cancer cases can be prevented.

Although cancer survival in the UK has doubled over the past 40 years and about half of the people diagnosed with cancer now survive their disease for 10 years or more, more people are getting cancer today than ever before. In the UK, the number of people living with cancer is predicted to rise from almost 3 million (2020) to almost 4 million people by 2030.

This is mostly because the UK population is expanding and growing older, but research has shown that our risk of developing cancer is also influenced by our genes, our environment and, importantly, the way we live our lives.

Certain lifestyle changes could prevent more than 135,000 cases of cancer every year in the UK.

In the UK, around 4,200 children and young people are diagnosed with cancer every year. 

Thanks in large part to the work of Cancer Research UK, more 0-24-year-olds in the UK are surviving cancer than ever before. Today, around 8 in 10 children and young people with cancer will survive for at least ten years.  

Research happening right now

We're studying the underlying biology of neuroblastoma.

Professor Anna Philpott, at the University of Cambridge, wants to find out what happens deep inside the DNA of nerve cells to make them become cancerous and develop into neuroblastoma.

We're finding the causes of leukaemia in infants.

Dr Katrin Ottersbach, at the University of Edinburgh, is looking into the biology of B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and how it develops in infants.

She hopes this work will lead to the discovery of new targets for treatment of this type of cancer.

Why early detection and diagnosis?

It’s simple: detecting and diagnosing cancer at an early stage saves lives.

Catching cancer at an earlier stage means that treatment is more likely to work. Early detection therefore has the potential for transformational improvement in patient outcomes.

When lung cancer is diagnosed at its earliest stage (stage 1), around 6 in 10 (61%) people will survive their disease for five years or more, compared with less than 4% of people when diagnosed at the latest stage (stage 4).

The importance of early diagnosis is even more striking for bowel cancer: when diagnosed at the earliest stage, more than 9 in 10 (92%) people survive their disease for at least five years, while at the latest stage this drops to 10%.

So diagnosing cancer early really matters.

Leukaemia is the 12th most common cancer in the UK, with around 10,100 new cases each year. Current survival rates show that 41% of people survive their diagnosis for 10 years or more in England.

Research happening right now

We’re uncovering the genetic mistakes that lead to leukaemia. 

In London and Newcastle, Professors Adele Fielding and Anthony Moorman are analysing the different types of genetic ‘signatures’ or mistakes, known as mutations, driving the disease.  

Around 9 in 10 children with leukaemia are cured of their cancer – but still less than 5 in 10 adults with the disease survive for 10 years or more.  

By developing a clearer picture of ALL, they want to understand why children are usually cured of ALL, but adults are not, helping more people survive. 

Lung cancer is the 3rd most common cancer in the UK, with around 47,800 new cases each year. Current survival rates show that 10% of people survive their diagnosis for 10 years or more in England.

Research happening right now

We’re accelerating research into lung cancer.

The CRUK Lung Cancer Centre of Excellence in Manchester and London brings together two leading institutions to create a collaborative environment where lung cancer researchers can excel. Led by Professors Caroline Dive and Charlie Swanton, the centre’s vision is to improve our understanding of lung cancer biology and use these discoveries to improve outcomes for people with the disease.  

Scientists at the centre are tackling lung cancer from all angles, from detecting it earlier to developing new and innovative treatments. The centre also aims to train the next generation of lung cancer researchers.  

Through this centre, we hope to help people with lung cancer lead longer, better lives, free from the fear of the disease. 

Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) is the 6th most common cancer in the UK, with around 14,100 new cases each year. Current survival rates show that 55% of people survive their diagnosis for 10 years or more in England.

Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) is not among the 20 most common cancers in the UK, with around 2,100 new cases each year. Current survival rates show that 75% of people survive their diagnosis for 10 years or more in England.

Research happening right now

We’re learning more about how lymphoma develops. 

Dr Jessica Okosun is a CRUK Clinician Scientist at the Barts Cancer Institute in London.  

She’s investigating how follicular lymphoma begins and changes over time, in a bid to understand why treatments sometimes stop working. 

This research could lead to the development of new, more effective treatments for people with this type of cancer.

Oesophageal is the 14th most common cancer in the UK, with around 9,200 new cases each year. Current survival rates show that 12% of people survive their diagnosis for 10 years or more in England.

Research happening right now

We’re looking for early signs of oesophageal cancer. 

Barrett’s oesophagus is a condition that can lead to oesophageal cancer, but most people with this condition will never go on to develop cancer. 

Dr Stuart McDonald is studying the biology of Barrett’s oesophagus to reveal early clues that a person has a high risk of developing cancer. The results could help doctors to decide which people need more regular check-ups, and which people don’t need monitoring as frequently. This could help people with low-risk Barrett’s oesophagus avoid unnecessary invasive procedures when they don’t need it.

Ovarian is the 6th most common cancer in women in the UK, with around 7,400 new cases each year. Current survival rates show that 35% of people survive their diagnosis for 10 years or more in England.

Research happening right now

We’re finding new ways to catch ovarian cancer early.

Detecting cancer before it has spread means more treatment options are available and more lives can be saved. But this can be difficult because some cancers, like ovarian cancer, have few or vague symptoms at an early stage. 

Professor Douglas Easton at the University of Cambridge is studying women who have genetic faults that put them at a higher risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer. He is using state-of-the-art technology to identify the early signs of cancer from serial blood samples from this high-risk group.  

Being able to test women who have a high risk of developing ovarian cancer could help us catch more cancers earlier, when treatment is more likely to be effective.

Pancreatic is the 10th most common cancer in the UK, with around 10,300 new cases each year. Current survival rates show that 5% of people survive their diagnosis for 10 years or more in England.

Research happening right now

We’re looking for molecular clues to detect pancreatic cancer earlier.

The symptoms of pancreatic cancer can be easily mistaken for other less serious conditions at first, meaning that it’s typically diagnosed when the disease is at an advanced stage when there are very limited treatment options.  

Professor Kevin Ryan in Glasgow is looking for molecular clues or ‘markers’ in samples of blood and urine that could be used to detect early pancreatic cancer. These markers will then be validated by comparing patient samples to healthy samples.  

This research could identify new tests that could help doctors find pancreatic cancer earlier when more treatment options are available, ultimately helping more people to survive.   

Pancreatic is the most common cancer in men in the UK, with around 48,500 new cases each year. Current survival rates show that 78% of people survive their diagnosis for 10 years or more in England.

Research happening right now

We’re developing blood tests to detect the early signs of prostate cancer.  

In Cambridge, Dr Charles Massie is using samples of blood and urine to look for fragments of DNA that have been shed from prostate cancer cells. 

This could be used to develop a simple test to help doctors quickly diagnose people with aggressive prostate cancer at an earlier stage, when treatment is more likely to be effective.  

It would also mean that people can avoid invasive procedures, such as tissue biopsies – where a sample of tissue is taken from the body to diagnose cancer, helping to improve quality of life. 

Worldwide, rare cancers make up 22 out of every 100 (22%) cancers that are diagnosed each year which is more than any single type of cancer. If we were to define all rare cancers as a single type, they would top the list of the most prevalent cancers worldwide, above lung, breast and colorectal cancer.

What are we doing about rare cancers?

• We set up and continue to support the International Rare Cancers Initiative, which is developing clinical trials worldwide to find new treatments for rare cancers.

• We’re supporting the UMBRELLA clinical trial. This trial could improve treatment for children with Wilms’ tumour, a rare type of kidney cancer.

• We’re working with the University of Manchester and Roche on the DETERMINE trial. The trial is set up to recruit both paediatric and adult patients, with any rare cancer type and is one of very few precision medicine platform trials in the world targeting these populations. The DETERMINE trial aims to find out whether existing drugs, including those which are licensed for more common types of cancer, could also benefit patients with rare cancer types that the drug isn’t currently licensed for.

Melanoma is the 5th most common cancer in the UK, with around 16,200 new cases each year. Current survival rates show that 87% of people survive their diagnosis for 10 years or more in England.

Research happening right now

We’re uncovering new possibilities for melanoma treatments. 

In London, Dr Victoria Sanz-Moreno is studying cancer cells in melanoma to identify weak points that we can target with new therapies.  

Despite promising advances in melanoma treatment, this type of cancer often develops resistance to existing therapies, so we need additional treatment options. 

Dr Sanz-Moreno is focussing on understanding how a molecule called ROCK helps melanoma development, and whether drugs that block this molecule could be used alongside other therapies to make them more effective.  

Why now?

Discovery research isn’t a new thing for us. At CRUK, we’ve been giving researchers the support they need to make exciting new discoveries ever since we began over 120 years ago. Discovery research has underpinned all of the progress we’ve made in helping more people survive their cancer for longer.

However, despite everything we now know about cancer, there is still so much about it that is shrouded in mystery, and too many people still die prematurely from cancer. It isn’t detected early enough in many people; resistance can develop to the most sophisticated therapies; and we still don’t know enough about how cancer is able to evolve and evade the body’s systems.

We therefore need to go further. Our new strategy focuses on the prevention, detection and treatment of cancer. And discovery lies at the heart of each of these objectives. A strong foundation of discovery research will help us to answer the biggest questions in cancer biology and maximise the benefits of these discoveries for people with cancer.