Financing the future of cancer discovery research

Cancer discovery research underpins many of the advances that have transformed cancer prevention, diagnosis and treatment. Yet discovery science often takes 10 to 30 years to translate into benefits for patients, creating a fundamental mismatch between the timescales of scientific research and many traditional investment structures. While public, philanthropic and nonprofit funders play a vital role in supporting early-stage discovery, increasing financial pressures across the research landscape have highlighted the need to explore complementary approaches that can help sustain the pipeline of innovation. Without continued investment in discovery research, the scientific insights, tools, datasets and biological understanding that underpin future translational opportunities risk slowing over time.

To examine this challenge, Cancer Grand Challenges partnered with the Milken Institute to explore how new forms of capital and partnership could help sustain the discovery ecosystem. The Milken Institute is a non-profit, non-partisan think tank that works to advance collaborative solutions to global challenges through the power of capital markets. Bringing together leaders from research, philanthropy, finance, industry and healthcare through the Milken Institute’s Financial Innovations Lab process and subsequent consultations, the resulting report explores how new forms of capital and partnership might strengthen cancer discovery research while complementing, rather than replacing, existing funding mechanisms.

The collaboration identified four potential models designed to strengthen the cancer discovery ecosystem:

• A precompetitive discovery consortium would pool capital and in-kind resources to answer scientific questions that multiple organisations would otherwise resolve separately. 

• A philanthropic carry fund would channel a pledged share of the future carried interest from investment funds into an independent discovery grant pool, with variants such as investor pledges or matched contributions. 

• A milestone-based discovery fund would review programmes at defined points and fund what the science needs next: continuation, release of resources to the field, or preparation for handoff. 

• A cancer discovery bond would bring committed future funding forward when there is an identified repayment source and the benefits of earlier spending justify the borrowing costs.

Together, these concepts seek to stimulate discussion about how the research community can create more sustainable pathways to support breakthrough science in the decades before patient benefit is realised.