The British government has announced that a consortium involving the universities of Leeds and York—as well as the Medical Research Council's Clinical Trials Units in London—has won a national competition for operating a network for controlled trials of potential cancer treatments.

The consortium will form part of a new 'Coordinating Center' for the National Health Service's Cancer Research Network, which was announced earlier this year by the British Secretary of Health, Alan Milburn, as a move to integrate cancer research across the country for the first time (Nature Med. 6, 945; 2000).

A second part of the Coordinating Center, which will be led by Peter Selby, chairman of the Centre for Cancer Medicine Research at Leeds, will be involved in translating advances from the laboratory to the clinic.

“For the first time in the NHS, we are creating a fast track to take the latest developments in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer from the laboratory to the clinic to evaluate their effectiveness for the benefit of all cancer patients,” said Yvette Cooper, the minister for public health.

Although the government had previously announced extra funding for the Cancer Research Network that will total £5 million ($7.22 million) next year, and £20 million a year by 2003, this is considerably less than the extra £200 million that a House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology had recommended be put into cancer research. But the government has accepted one of the committee's key suggestions, namely the creation of a “virtual” National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) linking together the activities of many different research centers (Nature Med, 6, 357; 2000).

In creating a virtual, rather than a physical institute, the government has sided with Britain's large cancer research charities and researchers in believing “that a single, large 'bricks and mortar' facility would not be optimal.” The new Coordinating Center will form an integral part of this virtual strategy.

John Toy, the medical director of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF), says that the improved infrastructure for clinical research made possible by the research network will mean that research organizations such as the ICRF “will be able to run more and bigger trials, and complete them more quickly.” Gordon McVie, director general of the Cancer Research Campaign, says, “This new initiative really will make a difference to cancer patients in Britain.”