Breaking new ground: our first grants in Ghana and on brain cancer among £4m of research

We’re delighted to announce £4m of funding to help more people prevent and survive cancer, in the latest round of grants awarded by World Cancer Research Fund International.

Dr Charlotte Le Cornet is looking at how persistent organic pollutants (POPs) – pollutants that are produced or released during industrial or agricultural processes – affect a woman’s risk of breast and womb cancers. Dr Le Cornet is using data in the European Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition cohort.

Prof Reginald Adjetey Annan is our first ever principal investigator who is from, based in, and researching in Africa. Prof Annan, at Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, will look at breast cancer among sub-Saharan women. Prof Annan took part in a grant writing course for researchers in Africa organised by Cancer and Nutrition in Africa as an initiative of the International Collaboration on Nutrition in relation to Cancer, which we helped fund in 2023 and 2024.

The grant writing course for researchers in lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs) aims to produce successful grant applications that address unmet needs and focus on understudied populations within these countries. Our investment in such initiatives underscores our commitment to fostering research excellence in LMICs and advancing global health equity.

We fund 2 types of projects: our Regular Grant Programme for established senior scientists, and our INSPIRE Research Challenge for scientists starting out on a career in cancer research.

Our grants are managed by World Cancer Research Fund International on behalf of our network funders: World Cancer Research Fund in the UK, and Wereld Kanker Onderzoek Fonds in the Netherlands. Our network partner, American Institute for Cancer Research, runs a separate grant call for researchers based in the Americas.

Our 2024 Regular Grant Programme awards in full

1. Associate Prof Kara Britt, University of Melbourne, Australia, £349,995.01: Mapping the impact of obesity on the normal breast
2. Dr Laure Dossus, International Agency for Research on Cancer, France, £349,567: Role of perturbations of cholesterol metabolism in breast cancer development
3. Assistant Prof Kalijn Bol, Radboud University Medical Center, Netherlands, £349,300: Dietary fibre to induce gut microbiota-mediated response to immunotherapy in melanoma (FIGURE-IM)
4. Prof Reginald Adjetey Annan, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana, £348,256.56: Metabolic syndrome, gut microbiome, and breast cancer risk among sub-Saharan African women: the African Breast Cancer Screening (ABCS) study
5. Dr Sæmundur Rögnvaldsson, University of Iceland, £340,297: Understanding the role of obesity and nutrition in the development of multiple myeloma from its precursors
6. Dr Tammy Tong and Dr Keren Papier, University of Oxford, UK, £317,552.13: ProMAP: mapping diet to cancer through the proteome
7. Dr Emma Vincent, University of Bristol, UK, £288,577.63: How does adiposity distribution influence risk of obesity-related cancers? Exploring causality and mechanisms
8. Prof Roger Milne, Cancer Council Victoria, Australia, £288,407: Diet, weight and physical activity and risk of glioma: an international cohort study pooling project
9. Dr Sarah Abe and Dr Manami Inoue, National Cancer Center, Japan, £285,682: Evaluation of the 2018 WCRF/AICR Cancer Prevention Recommendations for use in Asia using pooled data from the Asia Cohort Consortium
10. Dr Charlotte Le Cornet, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), £272,589.54: Dietary related persistent organic pollutants (POPs) circulating concentration, BMI, endometrial and breast cancer risk
11. Dr Anouk Hiensch, University Medical Centre Utrecht, Netherlands, £250,984.74: Uncovering the underlying mechanisms: deciphering exercise’s impact on cancer-related fatigue in patients with metastatic breast cancer
12. Dr Lorena Arribas Bellvitge, Biomedical Research Institute – IDIBELL, Spain, £60,000: Weight management in obese cancer patients during curative active treatment (CANOBESE study)

Our 2024 INSPIRE Research Challenge awards in full

1. Dr Forrest Baker, The University of Arizona, US, £75,000: Harnessing γδ t-cell therapies with exercise to treat multiple myeloma
2. Dr Fernanda Mesa Chávez, Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Mexico £75,000: Online mindfulness-based stress reduction intervention for patients with breast cancer receiving chemotherapy
3. Dr Baoting He, University of Hong Kong, China, £75,000: Gut microbiota and cancer risk in east Asians: a two-sample Mendelian randomization study
4. Dr Evertine Wesselink, Wageningen University, Netherlands, £74,995: Connecting the dots: examining the relationship between lifestyle, immune-related tumour characteristics and colorectal cancer recurrence
5. Dr David van Dijk, Maastricht University, Netherlands, £74,918.64: Insulin resistance as driver of myosteatosis in colorectal cancer
6. Dr Felix Onyije, International Agency for Research on Cancer, France, £74,751.20: Occupational night shift work and sleep imbalance and the risk of testicular germ cell tumours in men and ovarian cancer in women
7. Dr Yahya Mahamat-Saleh, International Agency for Research on Cancer, France, £60,000: Identification of novel metabolic signatures related to stressful life events and breast cancer risk and survival