NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Cancer Research UK announced today said it has designated its first three Major Centres and provided them £5 million ($7.9 million) each to support efforts to develop personalized cancer therapies and to detect disease at earlier stages.
The centers gaining Major Centre status are the Cancer Research UK Oxford Centre, the Cancer Research UK Manchester Centre; and the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre. CRUK has a network of 15 research centers in total.
Acting as research hubs for the CRUK center network, the Major Centres will bring together expertise, encourage collaborative research, and bridge the gap between laboratory research and clinical applications in order to develop personalized approaches to cancer diagnosis and treatment, CRUK said.
The Cancer Research UK Oxford Centre will focus on research to make treatments less invasive with investments going to improving knowledgebases and access to biological data.
At the Cancer Research UK Manchester Centre, researchers will profile blood samples starting at diagnosis and interrogate DNA and cancer cells released from tumors in order to help clinicians choose the most appropriate drugs and other treatment options, including surgery and radiotherapy, for each patient.
Lastly, the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Center will create new applications to improve the detection and treatment of cancer. Researchers will develop new programs in early detection and integrative cancer medicine.