Our Story
Fighting cancer with people power
More people will lead healthier, happier and longer lives after a cancer diagnosis if we can develop kinder, more personalised treatments. We formed a worldwide army of citizen scientists to get there sooner.
Find out how we turned hundreds of thousands of supporters into researchers below.
500,000 global volunteers
Our citizen science projects: Cell Slider, Genes in Space, Reverse The Odds, The Impossible Line and Trailblazer, allowed over half a million people from 182 countries to join forces and accelerate research. From beating puzzles, building magical worlds and playing adventure games on your mobile, to seeing exactly what our scientists see in the lab from the comfort of your computer, each project catered to different interests.
Citizen science accelerates research
Our scientists collect huge amounts of data, which needs to be analysed by human beings – computers often aren’t yet good enough in every instance.
By incorporating data analysis into apps and games, we allowed thousands of people across the world provide crucial information about tumours to scientists.
Building the World's First Cancer-Fighting Mobile Game
Every day, scientists search for clues within the genetic faults found in tumour samples. By making sense of how, why and where faults occur in our DNA, they’re able to better understand how a cancer will progress. And how it can be stopped.
Computer programmes are allowing more and more of this work to be automated. But there are circumstances where they’re just not sensitive enough to analyse this data in the way a person can. Manual analysis takes a long time when it’s just one scientist bearing the load. So we built a way to share the burden: Genes in Space.
Thanks to Genes in Space, over 400,000 people were able to collectively analyse four kilometres of breast cancer DNA in two years. We discovered that the world was waiting for the chance to help cancer researchers directly. So we built even more projects, and involved even more people in the fight.
Our collaborators
Nothing would have been possible without support and guidance from our collaborators, including:
- Makers and Innovators
- Chillingo
- Zooniverse
- Maverick Television
- Channel 4
- Chunk
- Guerilla Tea
- Rational Group
- Amazon Web Services