The process from discovering a potential new treatment in the laboratory to making it available to the public can be a long and expensive journey. Many new anti-cancer drugs take in excess of 10 years and in excess of £500m to develop.

During this process Cancer Research UK works with a number of partners to ensure that we are maximising patient benefit. Our partners include research institutes and charities, funding bodies, commercial companies and the NHS – all provide key skills and resources to enable us to develop new treatments in the most effective way.

Outlined below are some of the key ways in which we work with industry:

Preclinical development

Cancer Research Technology (CRT) is a specialist technology transfer and development company wholly owned by Cancer Research UK. It focuses on maximising cancer patient benefit from publicly funded research.

CRT helps to develop and protect opportunities and inventions arising from Cancer Research UK-funded research. To do this CRT works in partnership with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. This enables us to secure the significant investment needed to develop a therapy and to gain access to special development facilities and knowledge.

The results of Cancer Research UK's funded programmes throughout the country informs anti-cancer drug development worldwide. So far, CRT's activities have resulted in three agents created by Cancer Research UK-funded scientists being developed and approved for the treatment of cancer. There are currently over 20 more novel treatments in development.

CRT has also established biotherapeutic and drug discovery laboratories. CRT scientists collaborate with academic and commercial partners to translate cutting-edge scientific research into opportunities for commercial partnerships and potential cancer patient benefit.

All profits made by CRT are returned to Cancer Research UK to fund further research.

Initial development of new treatments

Our Drug Development Office (DDO) manages the development of novel treatments identified in the lab and the testing of these new treatments in cancer patients in trials. These trials involve, in the first instance, 20 - 40 patients. These studies may examine the new treatments in patients for the first time or investigate their effects in patients with certain kinds of cancer.

The DDO works with industry in a variety of ways:

• Some of the new treatments we work on have come from our own research. Sometimes, CRT may license them to a company during our studies. When that happens, we continue to work with the company while we complete our research to ensure the new therapy has the best chance of succeeding.



• Some of the drugs that we develop come from pharmaceutical and biotech companies. We undertake studies that are developed by doctors interested in developing new treatments. These are trials that would not otherwise be carried out by the company. In many cases our costs are covered by the company, but in others they provide the drugs for free and give the charity an appropriate financial return if the data is used by the company.



• When we do the lab testing of a new treatment before we give it to patients for the first time, we sometimes contract some of the work to specialist companies. We do this if the work cannot be done in our own labs because of the strict standards required for testing new drugs before they can be given to cancer patients.

Clinical development

Our Clinical Trials department is involved in the final stages of testing new treatments or combinations of treatments before they become more widely available to patients.

These "late phase" trials can involve hundreds or even thousands of patients and cost many millions of pounds to run. Where possible we fund these trials in partnership with other charities, research councils such as the Medical Research Council, the pharmaceutical industry and with the NHS.

All the trials that we fund or approve are developed by doctors who have a particular interest in improving outcomes for cancer patients. If a trial involves a drug that hasn't yet been approved by the government for general use, the company that makes this drug will often provide it free of charge for the duration of the trial. The doctors then approach Cancer Research UK for funding for trial management. Again, if this is very expensive we may fund this in partnership with another charity.

The NHS is another important partner in our clinical trials. A patient entered onto a trial may need to stay in hospital a little longer or have extra blood test or x-rays. The NHS cover these extra costs.

The trial is closely reviewed while it is running, usually for at least five years, to ensure that patients are treated as planned and their progress is regularly checked.