Why did Prostate Cancer Research Centre want to become NCRI partners?
At Prostate Cancer Research Centre (PCRC) we have significantly increased our research in the last year and we felt that being part of a coordinated approach was now appropriate for an organisation making a significant contribution to prostate cancer research spend in the UK.
We felt that we could learn from being part of the network and that it would help us in making the right decisions about where to spend our finite funds. We also liked the values and culture of NCRI, and we felt they aligned strongly with our own.
What are you most looking forward to as NCRI partners?
I think we are most looking forward to learning from the other partners and working with the NCRI team to get better data on where we should focus our research. We would like to improve the quality of the science we fund by using the extended networks available to NCRI.
What do you think is the most exciting opportunity in prostate cancer research (or cancer research as a whole) at the moment?
There is a cohort of new scientists with interesting ideas that are using new technology to solve problems that we haven’t been able to solve before. In prostate cancer we are getting some incredible ideas from a wide range of areas of research and it feels as though any of them could produce exciting results.
What do you think is the biggest challenge in prostate cancer research (or cancer research as a whole) at the moment?
A huge number of the cohort of great new scientists have come to the UK because it is such an incredible global hub. Those individuals won’t choose here if we have more barriers and are less welcoming than other global centres for science. The best people have the greatest number of choices about where they can work.
