A fresh approach to liver biobanking

Joint leads Helen Reeves and Derek Mann set up the Hepatocellular Carcinoma Expediter Network – or HUNTER, to further understanding of the immunobiology of liver cancer.

HUNTER is a collaboration of 11 universities from the UK, Spain and Italy building both the community and the tools to push forward liver cancer research.

An HCC tissue biobank is a key aspect of the project, with new protocols and tech to support the latest methods in studying tumour microenvironment which now supports 20+ research projects globally.

Latest UK Health Research Analysis out now

The 2022 UK Health Research Analysis report has been published, providing a detailed overview of public and charity-funded UK health research funding. It covers where funding is being spent both geographically and by topic of interest, and is the fifth report produced since 2004, with 173 organisations submitting data on grants active during 2022.

The report reveals several interesting insights including that in 2022, there was a combined spend of £4.17bn on UK Healthcare Research from the contributing organisations. Adjusted for inflation, this is a decrease of 2.5% from the previous 2018 report.

Research into ‘cancer and neoplasms’ remains the second highest funded category of research. However, this has reduced as a proportion of total spend on research since 2004.

Since 2004 there has been a shift in spending away from basic research, illustrating a national shift to more translational research areas.