The Discovery Committee (formerly known as the Development Committee) was established in September 2003 as a joint funding initiative between Cancer Research UK and Cancer Research Technology (CRT)

The Discovery Committee is the sole Cancer Research UK scheme operating for managed development of projects arising from CR-UK's basic research portfolio and for Intellectual Property arising from outside the Cancer Research UK portfolio but managed through CRT. The aim of the scheme is to improve the likelihood of research eventually leading to a new preventative, therapeutic or diagnostic entity by:

• Assessment of the potential value of research findings for developing new preventative, therapeutic or diagnostic approaches;
• Establishing a project plan, which charts a route to developing research findings;
• Funding of the project plan to achieve specific milestones and endpoints;
• Management and monitoring of the project by the charity and CRT to achieve goals within agreed timescales.

For further information regarding the expertise of the Discovery Committee, click here.

Eligibility
Those eligible to take part in the scheme include:

• Any Cancer Research UK funded scientist/clinician (project or programme grant holder, institute or direct employee);
• Any other scientist with an original idea, funded through another organisation, where CRT handles, or will handle, its intellectual property arrangements;
• Any potential collaborating UK scientist (irrespective of funding body) who has been identified by the originating scientist or the charity as bringing important skills to assist product development.

Assessment
What sort of research and development is funding likely to be targeted towards?

• Demonstrating that a particular molecular event is likely to prove an important prevention, therapy or diagnosis of cancer (target validation);
• Developing candidate preventative or therapeutic entities - from drug discovery through to pre-clinical testing;
• Establishing candidate diagnostic techniques or assays which may predict clinical outcome;
• Developing new technologies which are aimed at drug discovery or improving sensitivity and specificity of diagnosis and prediction of clinical outcome.
• Target validation studies where these are particularly designed to underpin a drug discovery project.
• Development of platform technologies for translational research that could be of use in drug discovery.
• Development projects looking at how biomarkers can facilitate the diagnosis, prognosis or prediction of outcome in cancer prior to the application of clinical trials.
• Projects looking at the development of imaging techniques and/or imaging reagents.

What sort of research is not likely to be funded?

• Research that is deemed to fall within existing funding arrangements and specified aims of the laboratory;
• Curiosity driven research that is not linked to an appropriate development plan;
• Generic technologies that are unlikely to provide direct benefit to cancer patients;
• Preclinical toxicology, synthesis and formulation of clinical trial supplies and first into man studies of clinical action [which are funded through the New Agents Committee (NAC)];
• The study of novel diagnostic and predictive techniques in patient studies [funded through NAC and Clinical Trials Advisory and Awards Committee (CTAAC)].

Applications for extensions or renewed periods of funding are also considered.

Place of tenure
Proposals should be based at a UK institution, although in some circumstances non-UK collaborators may also be acceptable.

Value
Typically projects will be funded up to a maximum of £500,000 in total.

Number offered
This varies. As a guide, 19 projects were supported in 2004 and 12 in 2005