APPENDIX 19
Memorandum submitted by The Wellcome Trust
INTRODUCTION
1. The Wellcome Trust (the "Trust")
is an independent, international, biomedical research charity,
established under the will of Sir Henry Wellcome. It is the largest
non-government funder of biomedical research in the world. In
the financial year ending 30 September 1999, the Trust spent over
£450 million; over 90 per cent of this expenditure was in
the UK.
2. The mission of the Trust is to foster
and promote research with the aim of improving human and animal
health.
3. The Wellcome Trust Policy on Funding
for Cancer Research is shown in annex 1.
SUMMARY
4. The Wellcome Trust has always supported
a wide range of basic, applied and strategic research in the biomedical
sciences relating to human and animal health.
5. With regard to cancer research in the
UK and more specifically human clinical research the Trust has
always considered this to be an area for which considerable funds
are available from other sources. As such the Trust has not supported
human clinical cancer research in the UK.
6. The Trust has supported cancer related
proposals where the research has had a broader relevance to the
understanding of biological processes and much of the fundamental
research supported by the Trust, in cell and molecular biology,
has contributed to the understanding of malignant disease.
7. A major contribution to the field of
cancer research has been the partnerships the Trust has enabled
with other agencies. One example has been the major initiative
between the Wellcome Trust and the Cancer Research Campaign with
the establishment in 1989, of the Institute of Cancer and Development
Biology at the University of Cambridge.
8. A second example is the Cancer Genome
Project, based at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Centre, Hinxton. In
October 1999 the Trust, in partnership with a number of other
agencies, launched this major new initiative aimed at identifying
the genes that cause cancer. This landmark project will be one
of the first examples of how the complete information emerging
from the Human Genome Project can be used in understanding human
disease.
9. The Trust has always considered funding
some elements of cancer research based outside of the UK as part
of its international programmes.
10. The Trust will consider all proposals
concerned with cancer research relating to veterinary medicine.
11. To fulfil its mission all research funding
decisions made by the Trust are based on scientific excellence.
CANCER FUNDING
IN THE
UK
12. One element of Trust policy has been
to identify and target support at emerging or inadequately funded
scientific research areas particular where there are few alternative
sources of funding available. Annex 2, tables 1 and 2 show that
considerable support for cancer research is available from other
sources in the UK. In 1998-99 there was an estimated total of
£186.3 million available for cancer research from UK based
funders.
13. As part of this total the £2.1
million shown for the Trust represents the funding the Trust has
provided, in line with the policy stated above, through its response
mode peer reviewed programmes. The Trust contributes about 1.4
per cent of the total charitable spend on cancer research in the
UK and of this £2.1 million approximately 40 per cent was
spent as part of the international programmes in 1998-99. These
figures do not include the two major initiatives the Trust has
funded in partnership with other agencies (see below).
14. Appendix 2, Figure 1 compares Trust
funding to that of other UK based charities since 1993. This demonstrates
that charitable sources of funding have remained relatively stable
(£140 million) since 1993.
MAJOR WELLCOME
TRUST PARTNERSHIPS
RELATED TO
CANCER RESEARCH
The Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research Campaign Institute
of Cancer and Developmental Biology
15. This institute was established in 1989 to
promote research in the areas of developmental and cancer biology
and is located at the University of Cambridge. The institute has
brought together in one building a number of independent research
groups whose interests relate to each other in the understanding
of how cells acquire and maintain normal function. These are working
alongside other groups investigating the cancerous function which
is an expression of abnormal cell development when these normal
controls breakdown. The intention of the institute is to promote
as much interaction as possible between the various disciplines
so that they may compliment each other at the scientific and technical
levels. There are now over 200 researchers working here, from
various countries organised into 16 independent research groups.
16. In partnership with the Cancer Research
Campaign the Trust has funded approximately 60 per cent of the
activities at this institute and has committed more than £29.6
million since its opening.
The Cancer Genome Project
17. This major initiative was announced
by the Trust in October 1999 (see press release Annex 3) and commits
£10 million over five years to fund research aimed at identifying
the genes that cause cancer. Based within the Trust's Human Genome
Centre this landmark project will be one of the first examples
of how the complete information emerging from the sequencing of
the human genome can be used in understanding human disease.
The technological advances made through the
Cancer Genome Project will impact on the study of other human
diseases such as heart disease and diabetes.
18. Additional support for the Cancer Genome
Project will be provided by the Institute of Cancer Research,
the Cancer Research Campaign, Breakthrough Breast Cancer, the
Royal Marsden Hospital NHS Trust and the Kadoorie Foundation.
19. The project will be led by scientists
from the Institute of Cancer Research, Professor Michael Stratton
and Dr Richard Wooster. The Trust had supported Professor Stratton
in a previous collaboration with the Sanger Centre which led to
the sequencing of the breast cancer gene BRCA2.
FUTURE PRIORITIES
20. The Wellcome Trust has a long-standing
policy of not funding research that is exclusively cancer focused,
especially when this relates to clinical cancer. This policy (Annex
1) has been confirmed as part of the corporate planning process
of the Trust and clearly states the areas in which the Trust will
consider proposals relating to cancer research.
21. The Trust will continue to work in collaboration
with other funding agencies on research programmes associated
with cancer as appropriate.
22. The Cancer Genome Project represents
a natural progression of the Trust's commitment to the Human Genome
Project; £205 million has been invested in the Sanger Centre
to date; and extensively exploits the data emerging from it. It
is an excellent example of how the research community can use
the sequence data to focus on specific disease genes. This particular
project is associated with a specific model, cancer.
23. The Wellcome Trust has established the
Development Fund (1999) administered by Catalyst BioMedica Limited.
The purpose of the Development Fund is to support applied research
programs that have potential for the improvement of healthcare,
including those related to cancer, with the aim of `bridging the
gap' between fundamental research and commercial product development.
The Trust is willing to consider proposals for support from the
Development Fund to advance research that may deliver a cancer-related
healthcare benefit, just as for any other disease area. As an
example, in 1999, the Trust funded a small Development Fund project
that specifically examined novel mechanisms of inducing apoptosis
in tumor cells.
9 March 2000
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