Announcing Samra Turajlić as the new director of our Manchester Institute

Addressing the environmental impact of cancer research

Thank you to everyone who contributed to our survey on environmental sustainability in cancer research.
Your insights are helping us shape our approach as a signatory to the Concordat for the Environmental Sustainability of R&I Practice.
In our findings, we discovered that many of you are taking meaningful steps within your own labs to reduce environmental impact, often guided by trusted sustainability standards, but less so organisation wide. While we found cost and efficiency play a role in this, environmental concerns was the primary driver. With this shift towards sustainability practices, there’s a strong case for institutions and funders to amplify these efforts through supportive policies and incentives that drive systemic change.

Understanding CAFs to improve radiotherapy outcomes

We have known for decades that radiation generates dose-limiting fibrosis in many normal tissues, but the biology of tumour fibrosis and radiation has yet to be unravelled in detail.
With new AI and transcriptomic analysis showing striking associations between enrichment in cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) pre-radiotherapy and poor outcomes, now is the time to unpick the complexity of CAFs, says Anna Wilkins.
In her article for Cancer News for Researchers, Anna poses two important questions to start:
1) How do CAFs in the tumour microenvironment before radiation contribute to the poor outcomes we see after radiation?
2) How are CAFs reprogrammed during radiation – in the context of the wider tumour microenvironment – to impact radiotherapy responses?
Read Anna’s article for her research insights and find out how she is collaborating with the CRUK RadNet network to challenge radiotherapy research assumptions.

Scientists uncover clues behind drug resistance in bowel cancer

Cancer Research UK-funded scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, have identified a key mechanism behind drug resistance in bowel cancer. Their study reveals that cancer cells can undergo epigenetic reprogramming—changes in gene expression without altering the DNA sequence—allowing them to “remember” survival strategies under therapeutic pressure.
Using bowel cancer organoids, the team tracked how cells responded to different drug sequences over time. They found that epigenetic plasticity enabled cells to adopt resistant phenotypes, which were then inherited by daughter cells. This non-genetic adaptation complicates treatment, as it allows tumours to evolve rapidly without new mutations.
These findings deepen our understanding of tumour evolution and highlight the need for treatment strategies that account for both genetic and epigenetic mechanisms of resistance.

The translational potential of ecDNA

Last week, our innovation arm, Cancer Research Horizons, launched its “On the Horizon” event series to connect industry and investors to the most cutting-edge cancer research. Meeting at the Royal Society, the first event explored the translational potential of extrachromosomal DNA, which has emerged as the driver of some of the most aggressive cancers.
Paul Mischel and Mariam Jamal Hanjani from the Cancer Grand Challenges team, eDyNAmiC, spoke at the event with Zach Hornby, CEO of Boudless Bio, which was founded by key eDyNAmiC members and is one of the first companies to take ecDNA-directed therapies into the clinic.