Our approach to funding is to support exceptional research that covers a wide range of themes including understanding the causes of primary bone cancer, developing new ways to diagnose these, identifying new ways to treat primary bone cancer and improving the quality of life for those with and living beyond a primary bone cancer diagnosis.
In 2017 we defined our strategic focus to 2022 - which will be the biggest commitment to primary bone cancer EVER. Throughout these years, we will support researchers to find the breakthroughs that will ultimately lead to a cure for primary bone cancer. We will work closely with other charities to reach these goals and we also welcome partnership invitations.
BCRT are committed to funding the highest quality research in a fair and transparent manner, our Peer Review Policy can be found here
The Bone Cancer Research Trust is proud to be a member of the Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC), the national membership organisation of leading medical and health research charities
AMRC membership is the hallmark of quality research funding. To be accepted into the AMRC membership, charities must demonstrate that they follow the AMRC's rigorous standards in peer review, and therefore, providing supporters with reassurance that their money is being spent on only the highest quality research.
Membership also helps our research money go further:
- Funding from AMRC members that is awarded via open competition is eligible for the Charity Research Support Fund (CRSF). This means that for every pound BCRT fund another 26p is invested in universities. This means that BCRT funding can be spent purely on research and the CRSF can allow the maintenance of labs, lighting and heating – the full economic costs of conducting research.
- The AcoRD agreement ensures that AMRC members only pay the direct research costs of clinical research in the NHS. The Department of Health will meet all costs for local trial co-ordination and management, data collection, and regulatory fees.
As a member of the AMRC, we support their statement on the use of animals in research and their statement on supporting research in universities.
Members of the Independent Scientific Advisory Panel
Chair: Professor Pamela Kearns MBChB, BSc (Hons), PhD, FRCPCH.
Director of the Cancer Research UK Clinical Trials Unit, University of Birmingham
Pamela Kearns is Professor of Clinical Paediatric Oncology at the Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences, University of Birmingham and Honorary Consultant at the Birmingham Children’s Hospital. She is President of the European Society of Paediatric Oncology (SIOP-E) and part of the Executive Boards of the academic consortium 'Innovative Therapies for Children with Cancer' (ITCC) and ACCELERATE; the international multi-stakeholder platform for the development of anticancer medicines for children and adolescent with cancer. She is also a Senior Clinical Advisor for Cancer Research UK.
She is Director of the Cancer Research UK Clinical Trials Unit at the Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences where she leads the research strategy for one of UK's largest cancer trials unit, delivering a wide-ranging programme of phase I-III clinical trials across all types of cancer in all age groups.
She is responsible for an academic trials portfolio of over 120 multi-centre & international cancer trials for a wide-range of cancers, occurring in children, young people and adults across 347 centres in 21 countries across Europe and beyond.
Her research is focused on the development of new therapies for refractory childhood leukaemias and lymphomas, extending from pre-clinical laboratory-based studies through to early phase clinical trials.
Professor Kearns has been involved in several European research initiatives including the European Network for Cancer in Children and Adolescents ENCCA, which is an EU FP7 funded Network of Excellence, the aim of which is to define and implement an integrated research strategy that will facilitate international investigator-driven clinical trials for childhood cancers. The work packages in which she is involved include development of a framework for clinical trials facilitation, delivering trial methodology for rare cancers and early drug development trials for childhood cancers.
Deputy Chair: Professor Bob Brown BSc PhD.
Principal Investigator of the Cancer Research UK research programme, Pharmacodynamics and Drug Resistance, and Co-Principal Investigator in the Ovarian Cancer Action Research Centre.
Robert Brown is Professor of Translational Oncology and has a joint post between Imperial College London and The Institute of Cancer Research, London.
Professor Brown’s work focuses on epigenetics, patient stratification and drug resistance research, with a particular focus on ovarian cancer. He facilitates development of compounds which can reverse epigenetic silencing and is using molecular biomarker assays to aid the preclinical development and clinical use of these compounds. Recent research interests include the effect of DNA damaging agents on the epigenome, epigenetic targeting using CRISPR and whether systems oncology approaches can be used to monitor and stratify patients for targeted treatments.
Lay member: Mr Simon Allocca
Simon’s family became involved with the Bone Cancer Research Trust when their daughter, Rose, was diagnosed with Osteosarcoma. Simon brings a very personal perspective to the panel.
Professor Andy Hall MBBS, FRCP, PhD, FRCPath
Emeritus professor at Newcastle University.
Professor Andy Hall is an emeritus professor at Newcastle University where his research focused on understanding factors controlling responses to anti-cancer drugs. Since retirement he has continued as a member of the Human Tissue Authority and has joined a local NHS research ethics committee. He is deputy chair of the NCRI's CM-Path initiative. He maintains a particular interest in promoting and facilitating access to tissues for medical research, particularly in rare cancers.
Mr Piers Gaunt BSc MSc
Senior Statistician, UK Clinical Trials Unit, Birmingham.
Piers Gaunt is a Senior Biostatistician within the Cancer Research UK Clinical Trials Unit in the Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences, University of Birmingham. He obtained an MSc in Medical Statistics from the University of Leicester prior to joining the CRCTU. He is responsible for the design and analysis of several trials within the CRCTU in various cancer types including soft tissue sarcoma, lung, skin and head and neck.
Mr Gaunt has a keen interest in efficient clinical trials methodology, encompassing adaptive trial design and, when he has time, statistical programming in Stata. In addition to his trials work Piers participates in teaching a number of statistical Small Group Teaching sessions to Clinical Oncology and Medical students and has also lectured on other courses within the university. He is fully committed to working to improve patient outcomes with an emphasis on survival and quality of life using efficient statistical methodology.
Dr Paulo Ribeiro BSc MSc PhD
Senior Lecturer and Group Leader, Bart's Cancer Institute.
Dr Ribeiro completed his undergraduate studies in the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, where I studied Microbial Biology and Genetics. He spent his final year in the Faculty of Pharmacy studying cell death in neuronal cells.
Dr Ribeiro then entered the Gulbenkian PhD Programme in Biomedicine at the Gulbenkian Institute, which included one year of classes and laboratory rotation. This allowed him to undertake his doctoral research at the Institute of Cancer Research, London, supervised by Prof Pascal Meier, in the characterisation of the role of inhibitor of apoptosis proteins in the regulation of cell death and innate immunity.
In 2009, he joined Dr Nicolas Tapon's laboratory at the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute, where he studied the mechanisms regulating tissue growth, namely the Hippo tumour suppressor signalling pathway.
In August 2013, he joined Bart’s Cancer Institute in the Centre for Tumour Biology. His research group uses the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism and his research has three major areas of focus: role of ubiquitylation in the regulation of tissue growth; role of reversible ubiquitylation in tissue invasion; and modelling tumour heterogeneity