Abdul Mutabbir, NCRI’s Data Analyst tells us about the recent International Cancer Research Partnership (ICRP) Annual Conference in Atlanta. As well as capturing funding data from our Partners to ensure research is funded strategically in the UK, NCRI also feeds in to the ICRP funding database as its UK member and participates in its Annual Conference, to enhance global collaboration and strategic coordination of research.
It was my first time being at the ICRP conference in Atlanta and I was looking forward to meeting other members and representatives from organisations such as the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Each session had a specific theme in addressing cancer research such as prevention and survivorship where Ian Lewis, NCRI’s Head of Strategy and Initiatives updated delegates on our Living with Beyond Cancer Research (LWBC) initiative.
A session I found particularly interesting was focused on cooperative funding models across different countries and sectors where each of the speakers discussed their partnership with industry to co-fund academic research or collaborations with organisations across Europe to enable quicker progression. Shannon Gallagher-Colombo, AACR’s Assistant Director put it nicely, in her analogy: the two pieces of the partnership puzzle (picture shown below).
Both sides can have their challenges and there was one overarching theme that I was particularly happy to see being championed: collaboration. This is something that NCRI values strongly and promotes across the UK cancer research community. It is key to ensuring challenges are overcome in the best way possible.
On the last day of the conference, we had an interactive session where delegates from different parts of the globe teamed up to discuss the sort of research questions they would put forward to help produce an analysis from ICRP database of cancer research funding. Questions such as which country are funding certain areas in cancer research and what research has been put into practice were suggested.
All in all, being at the ICRP Annual Conference was a great experience and wonderful to see organisations from across the world collaborating with each other and sharing their experiences to help solve challenges we face in cancer research. Thanks to ICRP for their hard work in organising the conference!