Unfunded challenges

Alongside our active and concluded challenges, these challenges were identified by our Scientific Committee and founders as being some of the most urgent in cancer research.

While they were posed to the research community, ultimately, no team was funded to tackle them. They're not open for applications.

Explore our unfunded challenges below.

AI-human collaborations in cancer

Develop interdisciplinary AI agents that can generate novel cancer research hypotheses and design research plans for them to be experimentally validated.

TME dynamics

Develop methods to identify the functional role of the tumour microenvironment over time.

Ageing and cancer

Challenge: Decipher the functional basis underlying the association between ageing somatic tissues and cancer

Cancer cell plasticity

Challenge: Understand cancer cell plasticity and its contribution to the development of pan-therapeutic resistance in cancer.

Chemotherapy-induced neurotoxicities

Challenge: Understand and prevent chemotherapy-induced neurotoxicity and neuropathy

Obesity, physical activity and cancer

Challenge: Determine the mechanisms through which obesity and physical activity influence cancer risk

Retrotransposable elements

Challenge: Understand the roles of retrotransposable elements in cancer

Dormancy (2020)

Challenge: Identify and target dormant cancer cells

E-cigarettes

Challenge: Determine the potential benefits and risks of e-cigarette use

Macromolecules (2020)

Challenge: Systemically deliver macromolecules to intracellular targets for therapeutic benefit in cancer

Senescence

Challenge: Understand and exploit senescence to improve cancer treatment

Inflammation

Challenge: Determine how inflammation causes cancer

Artifical intelligence

Challenge: Detect cancer earlier by interrogating medical and non-medical data sets using machine and deep-learning

Dormancy (2017)

Challenge: Identify and target tumour cells that remain dormant for many years after seemingly effective treatment

Treatment regimens

Challenge: Define mechanistic rules for combinatorial treatments to overcome resistance and avoid toxicity

Tumour vaccinology

Challenge: Create novel tumour vaccinology approaches that establish or enhance successful immune responses beyond what is revealed by current checkpoint therapy