About The CRUK Oxford Centre

Harnessing World Leading Science to Cure Cancer

Established in 2010, the CRUK Oxford Centre harnesses Oxford’s world-leading cancer research with the core aim of facilitating collaboration to ensure rapid translation from scientific discovery to treatments for patients.

The Centre is run as part of the Oxford Cancer network, with a focus on funding Cancer Research UK strategic priorities and research focuses.

Vision & Strategy

The Centre helps to bring together the breadth and depth of excellence in Oxford for the benefit of cancer research.

Our vision is to harness Oxford’s world-leading science across a broad range of disciplines for the improvement of treatment decisions that cancer patients and their clinicians make and enable earlier detection of easier to treat cancer, by funding of clinical trial and experimental medicine research infrastructure.

We are shifting the current clinical trial paradigm by focusing on early stage cancer, selecting the optimal combination of novel therapies and applying them in ‘smart’ early phase clinical trials. This concept of precision medicine will speed up the development of new treatments, getting them to the right patients faster.

The Centre is driven by a set of core principles which are the guiding foundation for our research activities:

• To develop Oxford-led science for application in early phase clinical trials and the delivery of precision medicine.
• To drive research in priority disease sites, including CRUK’s cancers of unmet need.
• To foster partnerships across the University and the NHS Trust to ensure maximum leverage for investment.
• To lead the national cancer agenda by identifying new innovations and trends, encouraging collaboration to strengthen internal partnerships and build external networks.
• To ensure representative governance to deliver equitable and transparent access to core resources.
• To support the next generation of cancer researchers throughout their clinical and academic career path.
• To build a culture of engagement to help raise the profile of cancer research in Oxford and across the UK.