This programme award is offered in partnership with Stand Up To Cancer and supports the development of data-driven solutions to common challenges in children’s and young people's cancers.
Outline applications open 15 September and close 27 November this year
Up to 5 years, with an earliest start date of 1 November 2026
Up to £2.5m
This award funds data/AI-driven approaches that answer cancer research questions addressing cancers in children and young people and aligns with our research data strategy.
The goal of the award is to generate novel insights about children’s and young people’s cancers, and in doing so, create or improve data and/or data resources for the wider research community. We particularly welcome proposals in target identification or AI implementation.
Proposals should clearly articulate how the research delivers against our aim to improve survival and long-term quality of life for children and young people affected by cancer. Additionally, proposals should explain how they will develop new, scalable and generalisable data solutions to common research challenges in children’s and young people’s cancers for the international research community. We particularly welcome international and industry collaboration as part of these awards.
These awards can be used to support maximising the use or re-use of existing data, and/or generating new data to fill gaps in the children’s and young people’s cancer data landscape. We want to promote collaboration across a broad range of research disciplines to engage with the data challenges in children’s and young people’s cancer research.
We’re looking for innovative ideas and tools for data-driven cancer research, so applicants to this award can come from any research area, including fields outside of cancer. To support capacity building, we encourage all applicants to include early-career researchers within their team.
Explore our research data strategy(PDF, 1.78 MB)
Explore our work in children’s and young people’s cancer
Read our overarching research strategy
Read about our previously funded data for children’s and young people’s cancer pilot awards
In line with our research data strategy, through this award we’re encouraging an integrated element of PPIE throughout. We expect the direct involvement and engagement of children and young people with cancer, and those with lived experience of cancer as a child or young person, and/or parents and carers. Their experience and method of engagement should be relevant to and complement your planned research.
Learn more about our commitment to PPIE
We want to ensure the results of the research we fund maximise patient benefit. This includes creating an environment and culture that enables and incentivises researchers to maximise the value of their research outputs, including data, for reuse across sectors.
All successful teams will be expected to fully participate in a collaborative network. Together they will share learnings and drive the kind of research data culture that promotes inclusive and exceptional international data-driven research. This will enable better understanding and treatment of children’s and young people’s cancer.
We’ve partnered with Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) to fund this award.
SU2C raises awareness and funds research to detect and treat cancers with the aspiration to cure all patients. SU2C is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization and was initially launched as a division of the Entertainment Industry Foundation. Established in 2008 by media and entertainment leaders, SU2C utilizes these communities’ resources to engage the public in supporting a new, collaborative model of cancer research, to increase awareness about cancer prevention, and to highlight progress being made in the fight against the disease.
As of April 2025, more than 3,100 scientists representing more than 210 institutions are involved in SU2C-funded research projects.
Join our webinar on 22 September from 1–2 pm BST for guidance on what we’re looking for from proposals and tips on how to put together a strong application.
Applicants must:
Be based at a research institution appropriately accredited or registered in the country in which it is based. This can be in the UK, the US or another country.
At the time of funding, for UK applicants, be in a post that is fully funded by the relevant national Higher Education Funding Council, the National Health Service or equivalent. This post must be guaranteed for the duration of the award.
Include at least one lead or joint lead applicant with an evidenced track record of expertise in data science or AI.
Include at least one lead or joint lead applicant working in children’s and young people’s cancers.
Include at least one UK-based co-investigator.
Ensure that they have relevant experience within the research team (academic, professional or public member) to carry out the patient and public involvement and engagement approaches they have proposed.
One investigator must assume the responsibility of named lead applicant on the application for the purposes of the Flexi-Grant application process. Joint lead applicants must be added as co-applicants once the full application is opened on Flexi-Grant. The lead applicant and joint lead applicants will be recognised with equal status.
Applicants must ensure that their host institution will provide sufficient space and access to resources to undertake the proposed research.
Most university departments in the UK are eligible as host institutions for a programme award. However, some locations may not be eligible as host institutions.
Contact us before submitting an application to discuss eligibility.
We encourage applications from international interdisciplinary research teams which can be located across multiple institutions. We particularly welcome industry collaboration, which may be included as co-investigators and collaborators.
A formal agreement between academic and commercial partners is not needed to apply, but a letter of support from a relevant individual at the industrial partner organisation is required. This letter should describe the nature of the collaboration and the industrial partner’s contribution, including funding and/or in-kind support such as data, samples, reagents, technology or expertise.
If the grant is awarded, you will need to contact the Cancer Research Horizons team to put in place an appropriate agreement with the commercial organisation prior to receiving funding. Such an agreement will align with our terms and conditions as it relates to intellectual property ownership and commercialisation, as well as our guiding principles on commercial data partnerships, which were co-developed with people affected by cancer.
Contact the Cancer Research Horizons team
Read about our guiding principles for data partnerships
You can submit applications for the same project to different funding bodies, including us. However, if successful, you may only accept one award. If applicable, please notify us and disclose this in your application under 'Other Funding'.
Career breaks (due to personal circumstances), part-time working and changes in discipline will be taken into consideration by our panels and committees to make appropriate adjustments when assessing your record of outputs, research achievements and career progression.
You can apply on a part-time or flexible working basis if this fits with the needs of your host institution and they approve your request. If you’d like to apply on a part-time basis, you should do so from the outline application stage.
Please contact us before starting your application to discuss your proposed parameters for the award and how to include the part-time request in your application.
The award supports new and pioneering research questions utilising data-driven approaches, allowing the development of new partnerships across disciplines, and exploration of novel methods for working with and getting the most from children’s and young people’s data, including existing or new research datasets.
Through the scheme we’re seeking solutions to identified challenges facing the children’s and young people’s cancer research community.
Each project should focus on addressing at least one research question related to children’s and young people’s cancer and one data challenge through the work delivered. The tools and methodology applied to the challenge should be AI and/or data-centric.
Applications to this award can include both the creation of new data and/or the use of existing data, development of data tools, consent and governance methods, or analytical approaches including AI.
The award may also support the creation of new collaborations/consortia, and we particularly welcome international partners. Our research data strategy has a particular focus on optimising the value of cancer datasets given that access to large-scale multimodal data is consistently identified as a critical need in developing and applying AI across the cancer research pipeline.
Children’s and young people’s cancer research areas that could be considered include, but are not limited to:
Generating or uniting research data to characterise and identify key features of critical biological differences between children’s and young people’s cancers and cancers in adults, with the potential of discovering novel druggable targets and pathways to develop more effective children and young people-specific treatments.
Translation of identified targets and pathways specific to children and young people (target identification/validation/ drug screening).
Data-driven approaches using genomic data to understand the penetrance of germline mutations in children’s and young people’s cancers.
Generating or uniting research data to explore lead time bias in relapse and improved prediction (eg based on machine learning approaches) of high-risk cancers affecting children and young people.
Generating or uniting long-term quality of life and treatment data of survivors of children’s and young people’s cancers to guide better treatment with long term impact in mind.
Data challenges facing the children and young people cancer community that could be included as a component of the proposal, but are not limited to:
Data standardisation and linkage: Tackling the lack of standardised datasets and robust mechanisms for linking diverse data types (eg clinical, genomic, imaging) across different institutions and countries which is a major barrier to large-scale international research projects.
Ethical and legal considerations around data sharing: Addressing complex issues related to consent and data access for children’s and young people’s cancer data, particularly in the context of cross-border data sharing.
Multidisciplinary collaboration: Fostering partnerships that bring together children’s and young people’s cancer experts, data scientists, and computational biologists to ensure research is both clinically and biologically relevant as well as methodologically sound.
Integration of routine clinical data: Developing effective methods for the collection and integration of real-world and routine clinical data with research-grade datasets.
Research lacking a clear data-led challenge with a children’s and young people’s cancer focus is not within remit. In addition, research must generate new or improve data and/or data resources that will provide a legacy for the research community.
Research that does not justify the data/AI-driven approach to the challenge at hand will not be deemed competitive.
If you aren’t sure if your application is within remit, please contact us.
The review process involves three steps:
Submit an outline application, sharing your proposed research idea with the support and research team they have in place to deliver this research. Before you submit, we suggest contacting us to discuss your eligibility.
An expert review panel will shortlist the outline applications which best match the assessment criteria. If successful, you will be invited to submit a full application and will be provided with feedback from the panel to be used to develop your full application.
Those who are invited to submit a full application will be invited to an interview with the expert review panel where you will give a presentation. The panel will make funding recommendations to our Scientific Executive Board.
Learn more about how we make funding decisions
The review panel will judge your proposal based on:
All applications should be based on a strong scientific rationale and seeking to address a research question in children’s and young people’s cancers. Where experimental work is proposed, the experimental design must be robust and include novel and innovative datacentric approaches.
Value of the proposed work in advancing the understanding of children’s and young people’s cancers, their detection, treatment, and/or outcomes (both short & long term). Applicants should identify how the proposed work addresses key research and data challenges facing the children and young people community. Applicants should also outline how the proposed research will lead to benefit(s) for people affected by children’s and young people’s cancers.
The proposal will focus on taking a data-enabled approach to the scientific question being addressed and justifying that approach. This may include the integration of AI approaches and/or focusing on improving findability, accessibility, interoperability or reusability (FAIRness) of data.
Successful applicants will become part of a Cancer Research UK-supported network of funded children’s and young people’s cancer data-driven cancer researchers. The design and function of this network will be co-developed with the children’s and young people’s research community. Proposals should detail plans how they will create and share data, data tools, or other resources/approaches that will benefit the wider international children’s and young people’s cancer research landscape.
The proposal includes a clear process(es) for making the outputs (including data, knowledge and expertise) accessible to the scientific community and the public, as well as safeguarding intellectual property (including the commercial potential of datasets), the privacy of patients and confidential data.
The proposal should include a clear, thoroughly developed and adequately resourced plan for PPIE which is relevant and proportionate to the type of research being proposed. This should be evident throughout the proposed duration of the award, including during the planning phase. The PPIE plan should ensure the direct involvement and engagement of children and young adults with relevant experience of cancer, as well as parents and carers.
Suitability and feasibility of the lead applicant(s) and supporting roles to carry out the proposed research with access to the resources and facilities required for the successful fulfilment of the Programme Award. Multidisciplinary industrial and international collaboration is encouraged including those in low- and middle-income countries. It is important to demonstrate the added value of the proposed collaboration and the individual contributions, as well as the steps taken to ensure an effective collaboration.
The proposed work must have the potential for impact on cancers affecting children and young people. While not all applications will be translational in nature, it is important that all research is designed with a clear line of sight to clinical/population impact. Applications should articulate this pathway and the evidence that will be required to advance along it. Appropriate consultation and collaboration with clinicians, population scientists, industrial partners and patients should be included to facilitate this.
The lead applicant and/or team members should have an excellent track record and potential to produce outstanding results. Evidence should include repositories, OS code and tools.
The costs requested in an application should be for the direct costs of the research and reasonably justified in line with the experimental plans, leveraging existing resources where appropriate.
We will provide feedback on all applications but please remember that all our funding decisions are final. Panel members cannot discuss their decisions with applicants, so please do not approach any members directly. This allows our panel members to keep the Code of Practice for Funding Committees, which keeps our review process fair and protects applicants, panel members and external reviewers.
Our review process is extremely important to us, so we reserve the right to decline applications from anyone who compromises its integrity.
Outline applications open: 15 September 2025
Outline applications close: 27 November 2025
Full application deadline: April 2026
Research proposals will be considered up to £2.5m for up to 5 years duration.
The award can support cleaning, annotation, curation, and linking of existing data, data storage costs, as well as facilitation of data sharing. Additionally, the award can fund the generation of new data and associated running costs of maintaining it.
This can be used to fund a single co-investigator’s salary (in line with our policy on investigator salaries), postdoctoral researchers, technical staff and PhD students (stipend and fees) with associated running costs.
You will need to include rough costings in the outline application within the proposal template. A detailed breakdown of the costings will be required for the full application. These should be included on Flexi-Grant in the costs section and fully justified in the justification appendix.
For more information on what is covered by our awards, view our costs and salary guidance.
For funding issued in the UK, we will not cover indirect costs.
For all funding issued to host institutions based in the US, we will cover indirect costs up to 10% of the value of the direct costs of research funded through the award.
We will consider funding indirect costs to host institutions only in jurisdictions where indirect costs are typically funded through charitable or public research grant funding, up to 10% of the value of the direct costs of research funded through the award.
All applicants need to submit an outline application. If you’re successful at the outline stage, we’ll invite you to submit a full application.
You can contact us for an informal and confidential discussion of your outline proposal before submitting for us to determine your eligibility and discuss funding options.
Please reach out at least one month before the submission deadline.
We also advise you inform your host institution. Institutional approval is not required to complete submission at outline stage, but they will need to approve your application online if you are invited to submit a full application.
Contact researchdata@cancer.org.uk
You can manage your application and if successful, your grant, through our online grants management system, Flexi-Grant.
We recommend you also read additional guidance such as our costs guidance, grant conditions, and other policies to understand any other requirements before applying.
Read our research policies and guidance
For both outline and full applications, one primary investigator must assume the responsibility of named lead applicant on the application.
The lead applicant must be able to demonstrate that they can lead the proposal and team effectively, be engaged throughout the duration of the award, as well as meet their other research commitments. The lead applicant assumes the responsibility of completing and submitting the application on Flexi-Grant.
In addition, the applicant team can include:
Joint lead applicant(s), if any: essential contributors who dedicate equal time and intellectual input as the lead applicant. Joint lead applicants must be added as supporting roles once the application is opened. The lead applicant and joint lead applicant(s) will be recognised with equal status.
Co-investigators: specialists who provide major scientific contributions and may lead specific aspects of the project (excludes postdoctoral research assistants funded by the grant)
Named research staff, if any: any named research staff who will be involved in your research (including postdoctoral research assistants funded by the grant)
Collaborators: key contributors not involved with daily operations but who provide crucial support such as research materials, specialised expertise or patient access
One administrative support contact (optional): assists with the application submission and completes the sections on the Association of Medical Research Charities and Costs.
The lead applicant must invite the joint lead applicants, co-investigators and named research staff to join the application on Flexi-Grant and provide an up-to-date CV and five-year publication history. Administrative support contacts must be invited, but do not need to provide a CV.
Collaborators should not be invited as a participant in your application. Their role should be explained in the research proposal, justification appendix and in their letter of support. More information about this can be found in the outline and full application sections below.
When including publications, please include a full author list (where this is unmanageable, for example for large consortium papers, you may list the first 12 authors followed by ‘et al.’ provided you denote your place in the author list, eg [Bloggs J, 15th of 65 authors]). Please also include the publication title, journal, publication year, volume number and either page numbers or digital object identifier.
ORCID does not pull through the list of authors, so these should be entered manually if using ORCID to generate your publication list.
Also be sure to list any notable and relevant research outputs from your work such as preprints, training delivered, contribution to consortia, patents, key datasets, software, novel assays and reagents etc.
To clearly distinguish between peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed material, you should list your publications and research outputs in separate sections. Research outputs must be clearly labelled and must be in a citable format (eg including a digital object identifier).
As part of your outline application, you will need to provide the following information:
applicant information and research abstract, to be completed following the guidance available in Flexi-Grant
research proposal, including an outline patient and public involvement plan, and accompanying uploads and supporting information such as narrative CVs, to be completed following the guidance provided below and in the outline application research proposal template
You will be required to upload a research proposal that does not exceed 2,500 words (excluding figures, figure legends and reference) and follows the guidance in our template.
Download the outline application research proposal template(PDF, 202 KB)
You should include a brief description of the patient and public involvement and engagement you plan to undertake during the award. Guidance is provided in the template to complete this. For more information and guidance on developing your plan, we recommend the following resources.
Explore our patient involvement toolkit
Discover the PEDRI resource hub
The full application will include additional sections to the outline application, as well as some sections requiring further detail than was provided in the outline application.
Full applicants will be invited to attend an interview at a review panel after submitting their written application, where they will present their research proposal, address preliminary comments on the proposal and answer questions from the panel.
Full applications have a greater word count of 5,000 words. If invited to submit a full application, you’ll be provided with a template for your research proposal including guidance on what to include.
As part of your application, you will be required to provide additional information and supplementary uploads as follows. We’ve highlighted where applicable to both outline and full, or just the full application in each section.
Outline application | Full application | |
Generative AI tools | X | X |
Narrative CV | X | X |
Declaration of competing interests | X | X |
Data sharing plan | X | X |
Reviewers | X | X |
Lay summary | X | |
Justification appendix | X | |
Letters of support | X | |
Costs | X | |
Association of Medical Research Charities full economic costing | X | |
Other funding declaration | X |
You will be directly asked to declare whether you have used any generative AI tools when completing the application form. If you have, you’ll then be asked to confirm compliance with our requirements on their use.
Read our policy on the use of generative AI tools
A narrative CV allows you to highlight your research achievements and contributions relevant to your application. You should also include your research outputs, such as preprints, training delivered, contribution to consortia, community outreach, patents, key datasets, software, novel assays and reagents.
Guidance on the types of activities you may include are provided below each question in the form template, but this is not exhaustive. You do not necessarily need to provide an example for every activity.
All lead and joint lead applicants named on the application will need to complete and upload their own narrative CV labelled with their name in the header or footer.
Read our guidance on narrative CVs
We need to make sure activities with commercial organisations do not compromise the scientific integrity, delivery or potential health impact of our funded research, and that potential conflicts of interest are identified and managed.
Please use the template provided in Flexi-Grant to complete this section. All lead and joint lead applicants must provide this information.
Read our conflicts of interest policy
We require a data sharing plan for all funding applications to ensure that the data generated through our funding will be put to maximum use by the cancer research community and, whenever possible, be translated to deliver patient benefit. Datasets which will be required for the project to commence should have a clearly defined access plan described in the proposal.
Data generated through this award should be compliant with any applicable ethical requirements while safeguarding the privacy of research participants by following UK GDPR and relevant local rules and regulations.
You must also give appropriate recognition of contributions to those who are involved in generating, collating, linking and analysing data, and give appropriate recognition of patient-derived data in project outcomes.
Your plan should include how data resulting from this project will be made available as widely and freely as possible to the academic scientific community at the earliest opportunity, and to additional potential commercial partners through a controlled access mechanism, considering patient privacy, intellectual property rights and other applicable laws.
Detail the steps that will be taken to ensure that the data resulting from this project will adopt the FAIR principles of findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable data.
Provide details for when data collected and generated by the project will be made available: 1) how and when after generation will raw data be made available for research purposes; 2) how and when after analysis will processed data be made available for research purposes; 3) how and when after journal publication will analysed data and methods be made available for secondary research
Broadly describe the proposed ethics and patient consent statement (if relevant) for sharing and release (and withdrawal) of (de-identified) data that will align with the FAIR principles, including the potential future sharing for commercial use.
Describe how sharing of the data collected or generated under this project with commercial entities will be approached.
Define the planned process for enabling international data sharing (both within the investigator team, if relevant, and external to the team) and list the necessary contractual agreements that will need to be executed to deliver the proposed data sharing platform.
Describe the data standards and definitions that the investigator team plan to use for the project including how these align with existing data standards in the research community and how the investigator team will ensure that the standards are consistent to facilitate ease of sharing.
Describe the data governance and data architecture model (including diagrams as relevant).
Describe the future ambitions and processes for granting access to the data beyond the initial research team and research questions proposed in this application. Include how infrastructure will be created during the project to enable these ambitions and what the anticipated timeline is for broader access.
Learn more about the FAIR principles
Read our data sharing and management policy
We encourage collaboration between academia and industry through our awards. Most UK host institutions will already have a technology transfer agreement in place with our commercial arm, Cancer Research Horizons. If not, our standard funding terms and conditions would apply. If you are working with a commercial collaborator, please contact the Cancer Research Horizons team before applying for a confidential discussion around intellectual property and technology transfer.
A formal agreement between academic and industrial partners is not needed to apply, but a letter of support from a relevant individual at the industrial partner organisation is. This letter should describe the nature of the collaboration and the industrial partner’s contribution, including funding and/or in-kind support such as data, samples, reagents, technology or expertise. If the grant is awarded, you will need to share an outline of the agreement between academic and industrial partners with our Cancer Research Horizons Team to receive funding.
Contact the Cancer Research Horizons team
You may nominate up to 10 reviewers who would be qualified to assess your application critically. You should not nominate individuals if you have had a close collaboration with them, or if you have published with them in the last three years.
You can also nominate referees to exclude from the review process, but please provide justification for the exclusion. We will decide on the final selection of reviewers and nominations must comply with our conflicts of interest policy.
Read our conflicts of interest policy
All applicants must provide a clear lay summary. This should not simply be an adaptation of the research abstract.
It should be written in clear and concise language that is understandable for the average UK reading age (9-11 years old).
As part of your lay summary you should include:
the study background, assuming the reader has no prior knowledge of the topic
the study aims and its importance
the scale of the current problem
an overview of how the study would be conducted
how the study will make a difference and what the expected immediate study outcomes are, including why the findings will enable change that provides longer term benefits for people affected by cancer
If relevant, also include:
the study population
how the study reduces health inequalities or inequities
how people affected by cancer and members of the public are involved in the delivery of the study
Where possible, involve patient/public members in drafting and reviewing the lay summary. Your host institution may provide support with writing lay summaries.
View our guidance on writing in plain English
View NIHR guidance on writing in plain English
For this award, you will need to submit a justification appendix. For details on how to complete this, please see the link below.
View our justification appendix guidance
Please upload statements of support on headed paper from:
the host institution of joint lead applicants or co-investigators based at a different institution to the lead applicant
collaborator letters of support, outlining what specific expertise and skills they will contribute to the work (not exceeding two pages each)
any industry or commercial partner organisations providing direct or indirect support
If your application includes elements of AI or machine learning, you should ensure appropriate justification and detail is given.
Include a size and power analysis where possible or describe how these will be assessed after data collection.
Provide the list of features used for model training and outline a feature reduction strategy, if applicable.
Identify and address potential data biases where possible.
Describe any independent validation set you plan to use or provide a justification if one will not be used.
If using artificial neural networks, discuss their rationale and architecture; if not, outline alternative methods being considered and the criteria for their selection.
Describe how you split data for training and validation, and address any potential data imbalances, if applicable.
Outline your plans to assess and correct overfitting or underfitting, and define the metrics and criteria for evaluating performance.
You should provide the costs that you’re requesting from us as part of your award. Add these costs under the relevant headings and justify them in your justification appendix.
Note that we will apply indexation to your application costs according to our policy. In addition, any ineligible costs will be removed. If this is relevant, we will contact you. As a result, the final costs awarded through an official Grant Award Letter may differ from those of the original costs requested.
As a member of the Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC), we monitor the full economic costs of the research we support. This means, for funding being issued in the UK, you will need to complete an AMRC full economic costing information form as part of your application package.
full economics cost: please enter the total cost of your proposed research
charity contribution: please enter the total amount you’re requesting from us.
Note that this information will not be reviewed as part of your final application.
View AMRC’s position on funding universities
In this section, you should list all non-Cancer Research UK current and pending research applications or awards held or jointly held by yourself.
Please include title, start and end dates, funding amount, funding body, type of award and whether it is current or pending. Also include a brief explanation of how this application will fit in with any current awards from us or other organisations that you hold. This helps the committee to understand the time commitment and scientific overlap with your other award(s) and the feasibility of holding our fellowship alongside.
You are permitted to submit parallel funding applications but must highlight this in your application.
Please contact us if you have any questions about your eligibility or application.
Reasonable adjustments can be made throughout the grant application process. We do not require a formal diagnosis to access support.
Find out about our disability and accessibility support
Explore the resources, policies and other support we offer to help you understand how to apply for and manage your funding.
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