Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help improve research into treatments for pancreatic cancer; and how much funding his Department has allocated to pancreatic cancer research in each of the last 14 years.

Research is crucial in tackling cancer. The Department spends £1.5 billion each year on research through its research delivery arm, the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), with cancer the largest area of spend at more than £121.8 million in 2022/23. NIHR spends more on cancer than any other disease group, reflecting its high priority.

NIHR have committed more than £7.6 million to pancreatic directly funded cancer research, across 15 research projects, since 2010/11. The NIHR continues to welcome funding applications for research into all cancer types. Funding applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition.

The following table shows the amount of funding allocated to pancreatic cancer research in each year since 2010/11 committed by NIHR:

Additionally, NIHR infrastructure funding supports the country’s leading experts to develop and deliver high-quality translational, clinical, and applied research that is funded by the NIHR’s research programmes, other public funders of research, charities and the life sciences industry. In doing so, our investment plays a crucial role in underpinning the research funded by our partners.

As part of our commitment to driving more and better research into less survivable cancers, the Government awarded £2 million to new interdisciplinary research teams tackling hard to treat cancers, via the Medical Research Council’s two-day cancer ‘sandpit’ strategic funding opportunity in 2023 focused on technological innovation for understanding cancers, including pancreatic, with the poorest survival rates.