Research
Bowel cancer is the fourth most common cancer in the UK and second biggest cancer killer. However, it shouldn't be. The disease is preventable, treatable and curable, and there have been major advances in treatments and bowel cancer screening programmes in recent years.
Lives could be saved if we diagnosed people earlier, develop new and more effective treatments (including improvements to surgery), and ensure people, irrespective of where they live, have access to high quality care.
The major advances in saving lives from bowel cancer in the past 20 years have all come through research. Through strategic investment in targeted research, we will deliver improvements in bowel cancer survival in our lifetime.
We want to transform bowel cancer survival rates. By 2028, we want to see the number of people surviving at least five years increase from 60% to 75%.
We’ve chosen four key priority areas of focus for the next five years:
- To improve the prevention, early detection and treatment of bowel cancer
- To enable patients to influence and shape the future of bowel cancer research
- To assist and facilitate high quality bowel cancer research; building the UK bowel cancer research capacity and the future leaders of tomorrow
- To facilitate collaboration and cooperation across the bowel cancer research community
Download our five year research strategy
