ACRCelerate

Colorectal cancer (CRC) remains the second most common cause of cancer death, and patients with stage 3/4 cancers at diagnosis only have a 10% survival rate at 5 years.

CRC presents an opportunity for precision medicine as it is common cancer, has known and established driver molecular pathways, and pre-treatment molecular stratification is achievable.

ACRCelerate brings together a European-wide consortium of researchers at the forefront of CRC research. Researchers Prof Simon Leedham and Prof Tim Maughan lead the work from Oxford, collaborating with researchers across the UK, Italy and Spain.

The overall aim of the consortium is to generate robust and reproducible preclinical data to de-risk future clinical trials based on patient stratification. This will be achieved through:

• developing preclinical models that recapitulate the molecular subtypes of CRC and characterising their signalling pathways
• using DNA and RNA sequencing to subtype the models, identify and test new therapeutics
• integrating data in a bioinformatic analysis pipeline

This research is currently funded by CRUK.

Existing collaborations across the network. The hubs of the network are shown with their existing internal and external collaborations

This international network prevents proprietary duplication of work, enhances collaboration and training and facilitates result validation.