Identifying opportunities to transform cancer research
Q&A with Gemma Balmer-Kemp
At Cancer Grand Challenges we’re entering into our challenge consultation period, engaging with the research community through a series of international think tanks. Some of these think tanks will be co-hosted by Cancer Research UK's partners, the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC), the French National Cancer Institute (INCa) and The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research. This is the first phase of a two-year cycle which culminates in awarding funding to successful teams to address their challenges. We talk to Gemma Balmer-Kemp, Head of Research at Cancer Grand Challenges, about the process and what she hopes will emerge.
First of all, I know you’ve been asked this many times, but what is a grand challenge?
A grand challenge is a timely and important problem in cancer research that requires the Cancer Grand Challenges model to address, which couldn’t be tackled by any other funding mechanism. It should be a complex problem that requires international and interdisciplinary team science, posed in such a way to stimulate creative thinking and innovative approaches from the research community to tackle the challenge.
How has your thinking around this evolved over time?
The definition per se hasn’t changed, but we’ve definitely learnt a lot, and obviously how we frame the challenges is vital. We need to be clear on what success looks like, but we don’t want to be too prescriptive, so that we inspire thinking about the problem in a new way and enable the research community to maximise the opportunities that Cancer Grand Challenges presents.
We’ve now set 29 challenges ranging from long-standing issues to emerging problems, so recent developments in science also influence our thinking. Outputs from our funded teams have already inspired new challenges, which is amazing to see, such as team Mutographs’ work leading to the normal phenotypes challenge and the subsequent funding of team PROMINENT.
Can you tell us a bit about the consultation process this round?
We are carrying out eight international think tanks, working very closely with our stellar Scientific Committee, as well as getting input from our Patient Advocacy Panel. This time the think tanks are framed around what our Scientific Committee members think are the most pressing areas/topics in cancer research. We will be hearing from a diverse range of researchers and clinicians to help inspire and hone our thinking around the next set of challenges. All participants will also be presenting wild-card ideas!
We’re also taking this opportunity to think back about what challenges we’ve set so far, just because we didn’t fund teams against challenges in previous rounds, these problems haven’t necessarily gone away. We will be thinking about how these fields have changed, and whether there is a new opportunity, or a different angle, and if now is the right time for them.
These think tanks will be important in helping to inform the thinking of the Scientific Committee. Our Scientific Committee will then come together at the end of January to discuss what they think are the most promising themes that come out of the think tanks. The Scientific Committee will recommend to CRUK their suggestions for the Challenges. CRUK and NCI will decide and set the final challenges that we will put to the research community in March 2025.
What kind of discussions are you hoping to stimulate at the workshops?
This is an opportunity to hear different perspectives, not just from within the cancer community, or even biology. The make-up of these discussions also really reflects the interdisciplinary approach of our teams. It will be interesting to hear how these perspectives come together and what the most pressing questions are in the area that we’re discussing. Importantly, we’re not looking for the solution, it’s really about the idea and the opportunity.
What do you hope to see from this round of challenges?
As with every round, I hope that we’ve identified and articulated some of the most important and complex unanswered questions in cancer, that with the Cancer Grand Challenges approach could significantly transform the field and importantly keeping a line of sight to the clinic.
As our funded teams continue to convince us of the promise of this mechanism for the right challenge, in this round of challenges we’re really hoping for bold ambition, with a clear aim, allowing us to fund more teams that will continue to change the way we think about and study cancer.
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Learn more about our challenge-setting process and the challenges we've previously set.