Leveraged funding in our completed grants
We anlaysed levels of leveraged funding across our portfolio of completed research projects, to see if researchers were getting the funding they needed to help stop prostate cancer limiting men's lives.
We found that every £1 we gave in funding to researchers led to an average of just over £3 in leveraged funding.
This is a really exciting figure that is very competitive compared to figures reported by other, similar sized funders. It is an exciting indication that lots of our projects are getting the funding they need.
Where does this funding come from?
We also explored where this leveraged funding comes from. We found that around 18% represents further Prostate Cancer UK funding, and the remainder represents funding from other organisations.
This highlights that many of our researchers come back to us for continued support, but also that we're funding high-quality research projects that get other funders excited, and keen to support the project at the next stage.
Different grant types
We've funded a number of different types of grant through our funding calls, including project grants, smaller pilot awards and grants focused on career development.
We investigated how much leveraged funding was achieved by grants of different types.
We were pleased to see that all grant types are attracting leveraged funding that is higher than our initial funding amount.
An interesting finding is that pilot awards make the most leveraged funding on average, from the smallest initial investment. This shows that these awards are giving researchers the preliminary data they need to successfully apply for bigger grants. For an example, see Ferdia's case study below.
Both smaller pilot awards and larger project grants are supported through our Research Innovation Awards scheme.
Some case studies
Here are some specific examples of when our funded researchers have obtained leveraged funding to take their projects forward towards making a difference for men.
We funded Professor Ferdia Gallagher and team at Cambridge to investigate whether hyperpolarised MRI could be used to identify aggressive prostate cancer based on metabolic changes.
Our initial funding was for the team to carry out a pilot feasibility study, testing this technology on a few men to prove it was possible. For this technology to progress toward improving care for men, the team needed to leverage funding for a larger trial of this technology, in lots of men at different stages of prostate cancer.
The results from our project led the team to apply successfully for a multi-million pound grant from Cancer Research UK to carry out such a trial of this technology in prostate and other cancers. The results of this study will provide very strong evidence that could lead to this technology being implemented into care for men.
Often, researchers come back to us for leveraged funding to develop a project further. We supported the work of Val Macaulay through many projects over an extended period.
Val had identified that people with a rare inherited form of dwarfism very rarely develop cancers, including prostate cancer. People with this form of dwarfism had mutations affecting Insulin-like growth factor 1 receptor (IGF-1R), and this led Val to propose it as a target for prostate cancer treatments.
From 2001, we funded a succession of projects for Val to study this target. We helped support Val to take IGF-1R froma potential drug drug all the way through to a window trial called ‘WINGMEN’. This trial has taken this work much closer to making a difference for men.
Further clinical trials will be needed to test how effective this drug is, and we hope to continue to support this work into the future.
Looking for leveraged funding?
Opportunities to apply for funding from Prostate Cancer UK, and external funding calls, can be found on our funding opportunities webpage:
