Cancer Grand Challenges

📢 Two new Cancer Grand Challenges 📢

We're calling on international, multidisciplinary research teams to come together and propose bold, innovative approaches to some of the most complex and pressing challenges in gastroesophageal cancer.

With more than 1 million lives lost to gastric and oesophageal cancers each year globally, the need for bold new solutions has never been greater.

Applications close 24 November.

Discover the new challenges: bit.ly/4xfm78b

Winning teams will be funded by the Torrey Coast Foundation and Cancer Research UK (CRUK), through Cancer Grand Challenges.

Our cancer researchers are putting AI to the test.

Three Cancer Grand Challenges teams have been selected as part of a $10M project to explore how AI co-scientists could accelerate cancer research 🚀

Led by @marinkazitnik (@harvardmed), Project AURORA is developing AI co-scientists to work alongside researchers, helping them generate scientific hypotheses and prioritise experiments.

Following a competitive application and selection process, researchers from three currently funded Cancer Grand Challenges teams have been selected as our AURORA pioneer teams. They will be led by:

🔹@NickyMcGranahan (team NexTGen)
🔹Welles Robinson and @squezadd (team MATCHMAKERS)
🔹@nlbigas (team PROMINENT)

We’re excited to see how this project can help our scientists make faster progress against cancer’s toughest challenges!

Learn more about AURORA and the pioneer teams ➡️ bit.ly/4yXS4Tz

AURORA is funded by @CR_UK through Cancer Grand Challenges.

Are you an early-career researcher in a Cancer Grand Challenges team?

As part of our mission to support the next generation of cancer researchers, we have teamed up with @AACR to fund up to 15 early-career researchers (current or former) from our Cancer Grand Challenges teams to attend the AACR Annual Meeting 2027 in Orlando, from 2–7 April.

🔗 Check your eligibility and apply now: bit.ly/4kmzRLz

⏰ Application Deadline: 10 November, 16:59 GMT / 11:59 ET

What drives someone to take on one of cancer research's toughest challenges?

In our latest Stories Behind the Science interview, Bart Vanhaesebroeck shares his motivation behind leading team REWIRE-CAN and why he believes it's time to think differently about killing cancer cells.

Read the full Q&A: bit.ly/3V5Suc2

📹 Includes footage from @ucl

Great scientific tools aren't built in isolation 👥

For @Jens_Luebeck, Paul Mischel, @VineetBafna3 and the rest of team eDyNAmiC, developing new ways to detect and analyse extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) in cancer means bringing together expertise from across disciplines, and key collaborators such as Jill Mesirov.

The eDyNAmiC team spans computational scientists, cytogeneticists, clinicians, mathematicians and patient advocates, each bringing a different perspective to the challenge.

In our latest challenge update, Jens explains how the team's workflow, AmpliconSuite, is helping researchers identify, classify and study ecDNA at scale, accelerating discovery in one of cancer's most fascinating and complex areas.

👉 Read the full story: bit.ly/4ieqyuJ

@UCSDMedSchool, @Stanford