Breast Cancer Now, a UK-based research and care charity, has created a Catalyst Programme that aims to drive innovation in breast cancer research and ‘stop women dying’ from the disease by 2050.
The charity states that: “We believe that if we act now, by 2050, everyone who develops breast cancer will live. But we can only reach this goal if we collaborate.”
The programme hopes to encourage and enable collaboration in the UK, as well as across Europe, to “bring together the brightest minds, the best resources and the latest thinking”, so that there will be “a day when breast cancer takes its last life.”
Through the initiative, which will ‘pool resources’ and unify breast cancer experts from across the continent, as well as global pharmaceutical companies, the organisation will provide more opportunities and projects for researchers.
According to the charity, there are currently 24 research projects, including clinical trials, happening across Europe, thanks to the programme, with all of those sharing the ultimate goal of creating better treatment options and therapies for patients.
The first partnership it has announced is with the pharmaceutical and research giant, Pfizer, with the charity’s researchers set to be granted ‘unprecedented access’ to ‘at least 14’ of Pfizer’s existing and developmental drugs, as part of the collaboration.
Pfizer has also committed around £10 million in funding across three years, with priorities decided on by the Catalyst Programme Advisory Group, which is comprised of independent researchers from across the globe.
All results will be peer-reviewed and published so that researchers anywhere in the world can access them, as the programme places an emphasis on knowledge-sharing in an attempt to “speed up the translation of research into new, effective, targeted treatments and therapies.”
“Through collaboration,” the charity says, “we can work faster and achieve more.”
Find out more about the programme and apply for research grants, here.
