Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Careers and Recruitment
  • Published:

Visionaries seek UK national strategy

Nature volume 392, pages 419–420 (1998)Cite this article

The Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) has a vision. By 2020, it believes that considerable advances will have been made in the prevention, early detection and treatment of cancer. But it cannot achieve these goals alone and, last month, it supported calls for a national strategy on cancer research — a collaboration between the UK government, the research charities and industry.

At present, charity research institutions cannot freely apply to government research agencies for support. Paul Nurse, director-general of the ICRF, says: “Government funding needs to be more flexible, to ensure that resources are spent where they can be best used.” The stumbling block seems to be that government grant-awarding bodies allocate only a small percentage of their budgets to cancer research precisely because the cancer charities exist. But links are being forged between the charities and industry, and such schemes may provide opportunities for students, postdocs and group leaders.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. the staff of Nature, based, London

    Alison Mitchell

Authors
  1. Alison Mitchell
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Mitchell, A. Visionaries seek UK national strategy. Nature 392, 419–420 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/32952

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/32952

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing