About us

Cancer presently kills 7.6 million people worldwide every year.

In the UK, nearly 300,000 new cases are diagnosed annually, 19,000 of them in Wales, accounting for around five per cent of NHS spending. For some cancers, survival rates, even after treatment, remain tragically low.

How can we improve survival rates for cancer patients?

Cardiff University is committed to answering this question and to tackling this issue in a radical way by bringing together world-leading specialist researchers from across the disciplinary boundaries to form a new, pioneering Research Institute.

Targeting cancer stem cells offers the potential to transform the way we tackle disease. They play a key role in the creation and growth of tumours, and the way they spread around the body. It may be possible to treat cancer more effectively by combining killing the cancer stem cells with current treatments that shrink the tumour mass but may not stop it growing back.

The European Cancer Stem Cell Research Institute at Cardiff University is a specialist centre focusing specifically on this field of research.

The Institute provides a state-of-the-art research environment for senior academics, Research Fellows and postgraduate students to interact. New early career research fellows have been recruited to work alongside world-leading teams in basic biomedical science and drug development to create a UK-based hub of research excellence to target cancer.

We are convinced that we can make a difference by changing the research landscape in this field – and ultimately, we can transform people's lives.