Achievements

ICR Chief Executive, Professor Alan Ashworth FRS

We have an outstanding record of achievement in understanding the genetic basis of cancer, and our clinicians and scientists continue to make significant progress.

• Abiraterone, a life-extending new drug to treat patients with advanced prostate cancer discovered at the ICR has been approved by the FDA, the European Medicines Agency and licensed for use in the NHS.
• We maintained our position as the leading academic drug discovery unit in the world with the discovery and nomination for development of 16 drug candidates over the last six years.
• We have identified 112 genetic variants that increase risk of different types of cancer.
• We led the internationally renowned START trials, which have changed standard clinical practice for delivery of radiotherapy to treat breast cancer and had a major impact on patients who will now have to make fewer hospital visits.
• We have contributed to significant advances in the understanding of the causes of skin cancer by defining how the protein BRAF triggers cancer, which is faulty in more than half of all melanomas. 
• We discovered that cancer stem cells in the most common childhood leukaemia have complex and diverse combinations of mutations, even within individual patients. This research may help explain why advanced cancers remain so difficult to eradicate.