Cancer Grand Challenges, a global research funding initiative co-founded by Cancer Research UK (CRUK) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), has announced four grants totaling $100 million in support of teams of scientists and patient advocates working to address some of the toughest cancer research challenges.

With funding from CRUK and NCI as well as the Mark Foundation for Cancer Research and the Asociación Española Contra el Cáncer, each team will receive $25 million to encourage researchers with different backgrounds to transcend traditional boundaries of geography and discipline.

The recipients include NexTGen team, led by Martin Pule, University College London and Catherine Bollard, George Washington University Children’s National Hospital, which aims to deepen researchers’ understanding of childhood tumors to develop next generation CAR T-cell therapies for children with brain tumors and sarcoma; the CANCAN team, led by Eileen White of Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, Marcus DaSilva Goncalves of Weill Cornell Medicine; and Tobias Janowitz of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which is studying Cachexia, a debilitating wasting condition often in the later stages of cancer, and identifying urgently needed therapies; the eDyNAmiC team led by Paul Mischel, Stanford Medicine, which will unite investigators across the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany to identify new ways to target extrachromosomal DNA, a driver of tumor metabolism present in around a third of cancers, and develop therapies for some of the hardest types of cancer to treat; and the PROMINENT team, led by Allan Balmain of the University of California, San Francisco, Paul Brennan of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and Nuria Lopez-Bigas of the Institute for Research in Biomedicine Barcelona, which will work with investigators across the U.S., France, and Spain to explore an alternative model of carcinogenesis, the promoter concept, in which cells are initiated by mutations but remain dormant until a promoting factor such as inflammation triggers the process to malignancy. In addition, this team will then build a “roadmap” of early cancer development, with the aim of discovering new routes to prevention.

“The hallmark of a Cancer Grand Challenge is an obstacle that’s just out of our grasp. Some push the frontiers of our knowledge, while others seek to break down barriers that have slowed progress for decades. All hold the potential to drive forward advances at a scale that could transform outcomes for people with cancer,” said Sir David Lane, chair of the Cancer Grand Challenges scientific committee. “We’re delighted to be working with a global network of partners who share our aspirations to drive change, supporting 4 new teams to take on 4 of the most important challenges in cancer research.”

“Cancer is a global issue that demands global collaboration,” said CRUK director of Cancer Grand Challenges David Scott. “By investing in team science at this scale, we will bring new thinking to address problems that have for too long stood in the way of progress.”

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