March Research News
Welcome to the March edition of Research News!
Please get in touch with any feedback or suggestions for future editions of Research News.
Our New Black Health Equity Strategy
1 in 4 Black men will get prostate cancer. That's double the risk of other men. Despite this, there are huge disparities in treatment for Black men with prostate cancer.
The inequities that Black men experience during their prostate cancer journey urgently need addressing. Therefore, we have recently launched our new Black Health Equity strategy. The strategy comprises three distinct missions, and we have outlined what we want to have achieved in 5 years' time.
Research Impact: What We've Achieved
Our Research Impact pages showcase how ideas we fund grow into real‑world advances — from early lab work to clinical trials that bring new diagnostics and treatments closer to helping men. Each month, we’ll spotlight one of these stories.
This month's feature: The WINGMEN Trial
The late Professor Val Macaulay’s long-running question - could blocking the hormone IGF slow prostate cancer? - sparked a research journey spanning more than two decades of our support. Her team at the University of Oxford took the idea from the lab all the way to the WINGMEN clinical trial.
Val’s work continues to inspire. Men visiting her lab could see researchers testing the very drug they were receiving, creating a meaningful connection that motivated both patients and scientists. Today, her pioneering research is still shaping new approaches to treating prostate cancer and preventing it from becoming more aggressive.
New Funding Opportunity For Medical Oncologists Coming Soon!
With thanks to the generous support of Trailfinders, in March we will be launching a unique and prestigious opportunity to fund an outstanding clinical leader in the field of prostate cancer medical oncology. This Trailfinders Prostate Cancer UK Senior Clinical Fellowship will provide £2M of funding over 5 years to support an ambitious academic medical oncologist aiming to transition to a research leadership position.
The call for expressions of interest will open on 16 March.
Additional Funding Opportunities
Open now!
Career Acceleration Fellowships
Are you a promising early career researcher looking to pursue your own independent research goals? If so, why not think about applying to our Career Acceleration Fellowship scheme! The scheme will support you to establish collaborations whilst learning new skills and techniques from the best research environments. Get in touch at [email protected] if you’d like to chat about applying! Deadline 26 May 2026.
MRC Clinical Research Training Fellowships
We’re partnering with the MRC to fund Clinical Research Training Fellowships. Applications are open to healthcare professionals who wish to undertake a PhD or reacquire skills after time away from research. Find out more on our website.
Coming soon:
Starter Grants for Clinical Lecturers
Funded in partnership with the Academy of Medical Sciences, these grants allow research-active Clinical Lecturers to gather data to strengthen their bids for longer-term fellowships and funding. The next round opens in July and you can read more on the Starter Grants web page.
Recently Published Papers
Each week, via our social media profiles, we highlight a newly published paper that has derived at least in part from our funding. Here are last month's specially selected papers:
Professor Bill Nailon, Professor Duncan McLaren, and the rest of the PROSECCA team explain in BMJ Open how they are going to use AI to predict how individual men with prostate cancer will respond to radiotherapy.
Learn more about this innovative study: https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/16/2/e104408
A team including Professor Yong-Jie Lu at Queen Mary University of London review how circulating tumour cells (CTCs) could be used in the clinic.
Delve deeper into this review: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41585-025-01121-8
An international research team including our funded researchers Professor Hashim Ahmed, Imperial College London, and Professor Mark Emberton, University College London, is exploring how AI could be used to detect prostate cancer on MRI scans.
Read more about this interesting work: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00330-026-12324-x
A team led by Professor Charlotte Bevan at Imperial College London examined how the FUS protein regulates androgen receptor activity in prostate cancer progression.
Explore this great research further: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41388-026-03682-3
External Workshops
AACR/ASCO Methods in Clinical Cancer Research Workshop
We've heard lots of great feedback on how amazing this workshop is for early career clinical researchers. It's an intensive course on the essentials of effective clinical trial design for therapeutic interventions in the treatment of cancer.
This workshop takes place 26-31 June 2026 in Vail, Colorado. Applications are currently open and close on Wednesday 18 March 2026.
Researcher Achievements
We would like to recognise one of our funded researchers, Karl Butterworth, on his new position as Professor of Translational Radiobiology at Queen's University Belfast. Congratulations Karl!
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