Cancer inequalities: Empowering inclusive cancer research

December 28, 2025

A female senior cancer patient of Pacific Islander descent wearing a headscarf lounges at home, hugging her adult daughter with affection. — Image: © Fly View Productions | iStock

Through world-class research, we can better understand and tackle the impacts of cancer inequalities to ensure we are beating cancer for everyone. Experts from Cancer Research UK explain

Nearly one in two people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime, yet one of the greatest remaining challenges is understanding how and why cancers affect people differently.^(1,2) Excellence in research is critical in helping us beat cancer for everyone. We need to deepen our understanding of how cancer inequalities arise and address them, ensuring we fund exceptional researchers and better reflect the diversity of those affected by cancer.

For example, Black women in the UK and the US are disproportionately affected by faster-growing breast cancer subtypes. ⁽³⁾ To date, the biology underlying this difference hasn’t been fully explained, and it is important to understand so we can develop more effective detection and treatment options to improve outcomes for women with this type of cancer.

Separately, cancer death rates are nearly 60% higher for people living in the most deprived areas of the UK compared with the least deprived, with around 28,400 cancer deaths each year linked to socioeconomic inequality. ⁽⁴⁾ These are just two examples of cancer outcomes that reflect the health inequalities in our societies.

At Cancer Research UK, we’re proud of our progress in addressing cancer inequalities. We fund a world-class community of researchers and have taken steps to improve the inclusivity of our research, while simultaneously broadening access to our funding. ^(5,6,7) However, we need to go further and faster to ensure we can beat cancer for everyone.

Research priorities

After consulting with experts and our research community, including individuals affected by cancer, we have identified key learnings from the past few years to inform our evidence-led approach in the future. ⁽⁸⁾

The impact of modifiable risk factors (e.g. diet and tobacco use) and non-modifiable risk factors (e.g. race and ethnicity) across populations is an active and important area of cancer research and public health research more widely. ^(9,10) We now need to deepen our understanding of how underlying biology interacts with these risk factors to drive inequalities in cancer outcomes and other health disparities.⁽¹¹⁾

We are undertaking new activities, including interdisciplinary workshops, to explore future research priorities in this area. We also have an open ‘Spotlight Call’ for grant applications for research designed to investigate inequalities in the early detection and diagnosis of cancer. ⁽¹²⁾ Funding this type of research is essential to developing more effective interventions to prevent, detect and treat cancer, improving outcomes for everyone.

We have also learned the key role of building trust with underserved communities when involving them in research, through a range of initiatives. ⁽¹³⁾ Despite best efforts, research participants still do not reflect real-world populations, limiting the data and samples we need to ensure research is relevant to as many people as possible. ^(14,15) We must continue working closely with people affected by cancer to accelerate progress.

Supporting the research community

It’s not just about broadening access for research participants: the best research occurs in fair and inclusive workplaces that promote and support equality of opportunity, encouraging innovation and talent to flourish. Inclusive research cultures have a breadth of innovative ideas, which could help ensure more people affected by cancer will benefit from their discoveries. ^(16,17)

As the world’s largest charity funder of cancer research, we remain committed to enabling our researcher community to do their best work in this type of environment. We aim to fund and support excellent researchers as part of a diverse community, whose success is determined by the quality of their science, not their background or characteristics. This includes supporting early-career researchers from underrepresented groups through targeted programs, such as our Women in Influence initiative and the Black Leaders in Cancer PhD Scholarship Programme. ^(18,19)

Funding high-quality research into cancer inequalities and investing in a diverse research community will bring us closer to a better understanding of how cancer affects everyone; our impact could be even greater when we do both.

In 2024, we awarded up to £20 million Cancer Grand Challenges funding to Team SAMBAI (Social, Ancestry, Molecular and Biological Analysis of Inequalities), a multidisciplinary group of researchers at 15 institutions across the UK, the United States, and South Africa. They are building a database designed to help us decode the factors that cause and influence disparate cancer outcomes in underserved populations of African descent on different continents.⁽²⁰⁾ We hope to see more multidisciplinary research projects like this, with the participants and researchers involved better reflecting people affected by cancer.

We won’t be able to achieve these ambitions alone: we want to continue partnering with people affected by cancer, researchers, funders, government, industry, academia and others to bring about a world where everyone lives longer, better lives, free from the fear of cancer. Beating cancer means beating it for everyone, through high-quality research, with participants and a workforce that are truly representative of all.

Authors

Shewly Choudhury – Head of Research Careers & Culture, Cancer Research UK; Mathew Tata – EDI in Research Programme Manager, Cancer Research UK; Catherine Elliott – Director of Research, Cancer Research UK; Ketan J Patel – Chief Scientist, Cancer Research UK