For grant holders

Last updated Monday 30 March

Covid-19 will have an undeniable impact on research in cancer across the UK, and we know that the coming weeks and perhaps months will be challenging for prostate cancer researchers.

We want to stay in communication with you as much as possible so we can fully understand disruptions to your research. Keeping us informed will help us do everything we can to support you and our other researchers, so please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the team if you have any concerns, questions or issues relating to your Prostate Cancer UK-funded research. 

Currently, we are closely monitoring the situation and continually reviewing how this could impact our plans for supporting ground-breaking research. We are, of course, anticipating an inevitable drop in our research activity in the short-term, due to the current lock-down and physical distancing measures that mean our researchers are temporarily without access to their laboratories and have had to put lab-based experiments on hold. We will work with you to help you carry out as much of your essential work as possible remotely until the lock-down is lifted. Read our FAQs for more information.

We are in the process of understanding the longer-term impact of the current situation on both our fundraising and our research programme. Until that time, we are putting all new research decisions on hold, but will try to maintain our commitments to ongoing research as far as possible.

We are, as ever, completely committed to funding research to help us stop prostate cancer limiting men’s lives, and are doing everything we can to ensure as little disruption to our research programme as possible as the national situation unfolds. We will update this page as and when our plans develop over the coming weeks.

Once contracting is completed, grant holders must complete and submit to us their project start certificate to activate their grant  This will state the start date of the grant and the point from which expenditure can be invoiced from.

Invoices must be submitted to research@prostatecanceruk.org quarterly in arrears, beginning from the start date as stipulated on the project start certificate. The invoice must quote the project reference and purchase order number, and must only include costs incurred during the corresponding claim period.

Expenditure should be broken down into the following four headings: staff costs, research expenditure, animal costs and other costs, as categorised in the Terms and Conditions of award. An itemised breakdown must be provided as a supporting document (including the name of any staff member whose salary is being met through this grant). Invoices and the expenditure break down should be submitted as a single pdf document.

Claims must be submitted within 30 days of the end of the corresponding claim period, except for the final claim, which must be submitted within six months of the end of the Grant Period. Your claim will not be reimbursed if it contains expenditure incurred more than six months before the claim period. Please note, final claims for each year will not be reimbursed until the delivery of a satisfactory progress report.

It is vital we record the impact of our research funding, so that we can continue to demonstrate the value and importance of funding prostate cancer research and work to implement research findings. Hearing about papers you’ve published, follow-on funding and patents you secure on the back of our research funding means that we can understand early on in the life of a grant how your research is contributing to our goal of stopping prostate cancer from being a killer.

All grant holders are required to submit annual reports and a final report. If additional updates are required, grant holders will be notified in advance. We’ll also be following-up after your funding has come to an end. All progress report forms are available through the grant holder’s account in our online Grants Management System (CC Grant Tracker) and should be completed and submitted through this system.

We want to hear about the progress being made with your research and are here to offer advice and support if you ever experience any delays or set-backs. We endeavour to meet up with every grant holder during the lifetime of their project and welcome invitations to visit you at your research institution.

We understand that research does not always go to plan and so we will consider requests for extensions or changes to the project. Any such request must be necessary and well justified, and must be approved by the Research team at Prostate Cancer UK. Please note that we are unlikely to agree to any changes which will result in an increase in the overall cost of the grant.

If you wish to make an extension or change request, please contact us at research@prostatecanceruk.org

To increase our knowledge of prostate cancer, we need to be open in our communication and dissemination of the research we fund, and we expect the researchers we support to share this same ethos. This is so others may learn from and build upon this vital research, to maximise the impact and reach of the research we fund.

Please get in touch if you would like support with communicating your research. We have Press and Communication teams that can work with you and your research organisation to help promote your research.

For posters and presentations, a high-resolution logo can be requested from research@prostatecanceruk.org

All grant holders must comply with our Publication Policy (summarised below):

• Results should be published in such a way that allows unrestricted access to the data and information, and the research must be made publicly available as soon as possible.
• All research manuscripts accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal should be done so in an open access format in all but very exceptional circumstances. Electronic copies of all manuscripts must be made available via Europe PubMed Central as soon as possible, although certainly no later than 6 months from the date of publication.
• Once the results have been published, any relevant data and materials must be made available to other researchers upon request (subject to ethics, approvals and Intellectual Property consideration).
• Investigators must inform us as early as possible when the results of their work have been accepted for publication or presentation.
• Researchers must acknowledge the financial support from Prostate Cancer UK in the following format: “This work was supported by Prostate Cancer UK through a [Award Type] ([GRANT REFERENCE]).”

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have suspended our open access reimbursement scheme until further notice. Award holders should consider alternative sources of funding for Gold open access publication, or otherwise publish via Green open access routes.

We feel it is important to support and encourage the early career prostate cancer researchers, in order to build the next generation of leading prostate cancer researchers. That's why we hold an annual networking day for all the early career researchers we support.

This event provides a prime opportunity to establish connections with other researchers at a similar stage in their career as well as provide a forum for you to present your research findings. Furthermore, you will meet and hear from some of the leading prostate cancer researchers in the UK, learn more about the work of Prostate Cancer UK and obtain key skills and advice to help you forge a successful career in prostate cancer research. You can find out more information here

If you would like to get in touch regarding your grant, please contact the Research Team by e-mailing research@prostatecanceruk.org.