ECMC History and Vision

Launched in 2007, the network is funded by Cancer Research UK, the Little Princess Trust, the National Institute for Health Research in England, and the Health Departments for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Since then about £150 million of ECMC funding has been supporting staff members across the UK.

The ECMC Network aims to act as an efficient and effective network that will assist in the delivery of early phase cancer studies between research partners to enable faster and more personalised patient benefit.

Through collaboration and teamwork within the community, the ECMC Network’s vision is to bring together world-leading laboratory and patient-based clinical research to build a UK-wide network of clinicians and scientists.

The ECMC Network works with the support of 17 adult and 12 paediatric centres distributed through Scotland, England, Northern Ireland, and Wales.  The centres are associated with universities with capabilities in cancer research, and are linked to local NHS hospitals. 

The funding from the ECMC supports staff members within these centres, whether they are the research nurses, laboratory technicians, administrators or pharmacists.  The flexibility in the funding enables the ECMC Network to allocate their funding strategically across a number of research themes.

In collaboration, these teams are committed to pioneering ‘bench to bedside’ medicines - clinical applications borne out of early scientific discoveries – to ensure that the UK remains at the forefront of international efforts to beat cancer.

The ground-breaking research carried out by the ECMC is made possible by funding from: