Our research achievements and documents
Unseen and unheard: life beyond bowel cancer
More people are living with and beyond bowel cancer, but many of them are living with the side effects of their treatment and aren’t receiving adequate support. These long-term and late effects cover a range of conditions, including bowel dysfunction, bladder dysfunction, chronic pain, fatigue, psychological problems and sexual dysfunction.
In October 2025 we brought together a group of experts - clinicians, researchers, allied health professionals, patient advocates and charity representatives - for a roundtable discussion. The meeting looked at what evidence gaps there are on these long-term and late effects, and developed a list of key research priorities:
- Do specialist prehabilitation clinics improve outcomes and reduce the impact of treatment?
- How can we develop a tool to measure late effects across someone’s cancer journey?
- Does assessment and treatment of late effects improve outcomes, and is this economically viable?
- How can we educate healthcare professionals to better recognise and manage late effects?
- What dietary advice is there for how to manage symptoms, including if someone also has other conditions?
We encourage researchers, funders and policy makers to focus their work on these key priorities, working together to answer the biggest questions around long-term and late effects.
Our roadmap for research: research strategy 2024 - 2030
Our new research strategy explains how our research programme will support two of our strategic goals:
- Remove the barriers to people being diagnosed quickly, and at the earliest possible stage
- Get the right treatment and care to every patient
We’re doing this by funding research directly and by bringing the research community together with patients, other funders and industry.
It was developed in consultation with patient representatives, clinicians and researchers.
Research progress report 2017 - 2022
In this report, we look back over the period of our first research strategy and celebrate the successes of our research programme.
Between 2017 and 2022 we invested over £1.3m to support research in five key areas:
- Identifying ways of preventing bowel cancer
- Improving bowel cancer screening
- Understanding and identifying people at high risk of bowel cancer
- Understanding bowel cancer in the under 50s
- Ensuring best treatment and care for all bowel cancer patients
This report shares details of research we’ve funded and the impact it’s had.
Previous strategies and projects
Unlocking the key to the cures: research strategy 2017 – 2022
This strategy guided our research programme and activities, working to save lives and improve the quality of life for people affected by bowel cancer. It built on the work done identifying critical gaps and recommendations, and focused on four key priority areas:
- To improve the prevention, early detection and treatment of bowel cancer
- To enable patients to influence and shape the future of bowel cancer research
- To assist and facilitate high quality bowel cancer research; building the UK bowel cancer research capacity and the future research leaders of tomorrow
- To facilitate collaboration and cooperation across the bowel cancer research community
Critical research gaps and recommendations
This landmark initiative aimed to identify the key bowel cancer research gaps and recommendations with the greatest potential to benefit patients and ultimately save lives.
It was developed over a two year period from 2015-2017 and involved nearly 100 leading cancer scientists, healthcare professionals and people affected by bowel cancer.
The issues identified cover the breadth of the bowel cancer patient pathway:
- Investigating how and why bowel cancer develops
- Determining who’s at highest risk and how to prevent bowel cancer developing
- Diagnosing at the earliest stage
- Providing the best treatment and care to everyone living with and beyond bowel cancer
- Need for greater collaboration, improved data sharing and improved communications between healthcare professionals and patients
The findings were published in the leading international scientific journal Gut in 2017.
We've been awarded AMRC's Expert Review Audit pass badge. This confirms that we use robust and rigorous research funding processes, helping us to fund the best research and driving better health outcomes for our community.
