Professor Ruth Plummer is Chair of our Scientific Advisory Board and Professor of Experimental Cancer Medicine at Newcastle University. Today she announces the return of our gold-standard research programme…
I’m delighted to announce that Target Ovarian Cancer’s research is back. After a year when funding for charity medical research has dropped steeply, I’m proud to see the charity leading the way in getting research back on track.
Researchers: find out more and submit a proposal.
With the announcement of this new grants round, we’re proud to be playing a major role in getting UK ovarian cancer research back on track after it was severely affected in 2020.
This week the AMRC reported that £270 million in charity research funding has been cut since the pandemic. While we continued to fund ongoing research projects, we had to pause awarding new funding last year. Getting our programme restarted this year means everything to us, and as Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board, I recognise the importance of making funding available to the research community through this grants round.
Ovarian cancer is a challenging and complex disease. Over 7,000 women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year in the UK and we desperately need to discover new and better treatments for it. This exciting new call for project proposals builds on the £1.5 million the charity has already invested in world-class research, thanks to the many funders and supporters who make this investment possible.
Together we can accelerate the discovery of new, life-extending treatments and improve quality of life for women with ovarian cancer.
Current projects
Target Ovarian Cancer’s previous rounds of research grants currently support three vital world class research projects at top research universities in the UK:
- At the University of Manchester, Professor Richard Edmondson is developing a more personalised approach to treating ovarian cancer through a better understanding of the range and type of DNA damage that occurs in the disease.
- At the University of Cambridge, Dr Martin Miller’s project seeks to ‘unlock the power of the immune system’ in the development of potential new treatments for ovarian cancer.
- At the University of Edinburgh, Professor Charlie Gourley’s project developing new, more effective and targeted treatments for low-grade serous ovarian cancer.
New funding
There’s an urgent need for innovative research into novel treatments for ovarian cancer because women with ovarian cancer simply don't have enough options. Each year, the charity receives far more high quality applications than it's able to fund, so there's also a huge demand from the research community for more funding.
We’re looking forward to receiving research proposals from across the UK, which will be scrutinised rigorously through our review process, which involves expertise and experience from research advocates and the Scientific Advisory Board. We only ever want to recommend funding for the best possible research, which will bring real benefit to women living with ovarian cancer.
