Charities unite for research blitz

Millions are to be pumped into cancer research

The UK's two main cancer charities are to merge and create a £75m programme of research into the deadly disease.

The new charity, formed from the merger of the Cancer Research Campaign and the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, will be called Cancer Research UK.

The charity will fund new multi-million pound scientific institutes in Oxford, Cambridge and Newcastle-upon-Tyne in collaboration with universities and the government.

It will become the biggest charity in Britain and the biggest independent cancer research organisation in the world.

Professor Gordon McVie, joint director general of Cancer Research UK, said: "This is a red letter day for cancer patients everywhere and signals the dawn of a new age for research."

Five projects

The programme comprises five projects, the foremost of which is a £40m, state-of-the-art research institute in Cambridge, employing 300 researchers, in a joint project with the University of Cambridge.

Professor Gordon McVie: "A new dawn for cancer research"

A £15m population research institute in Oxford is being set up to study the prevention and control of cancer and other killer diseases, a joint venture with Oxford University and the British Heart Foundation.

A research centre in Newcastle - the Northern Institute for Cancer Research - in partnership with the government, the Foundation For Children With Leukaemia and Newcastle University, will be set up with £11m to develop new anti-cancer drugs.

Cancer Research UK has announced its six key aims for the future:

• to cure cancer patients faster; to cut numbers of people getting cancer
• to bring better treatments to cancer patients
• to train more cancer doctors, nurses and scientists for research
• to be the authoritative source of information on cancer
• to maximise resources available for cancer research

Cancer Research UK will have an annual scientific budget of over £130m and a team of 3,000 dedicated researchers, doctors and nurses.

Dr Paul Nurse, the charity's second joint director general, said: "Separately, as Imperial Cancer Research Fund and the Cancer Research Campaign, we struggled to buy the expensive facilities and hi-tech equipment modern research requires.

"Together, this will now be possible, increasing the speed by which lab bench discoveries translate to patient benefits."