Cancer Research UK enters the crowdfunding fray

Cancer Research UK has got its first three pilot crowdfunding projects up and running. Craig Nicholson spoke to Nick Grant, CRUK’s director of strategy, about the potential rewards of this alternative funding source.

Reward-based crowdfunding uses the internet and social media to source funding of varying scale from the public in return for corresponding rewards, which are sometimes personalised and often of limited availability. CRUK is using the crowdfunding site Indiegogo for its three pilot projects: one looking at whether cancer spread and avoidance of immune detection might be linked, another that will attempt to grow a lung in the lab to study how lung cancer develops, and a third that is aiming to expand a clinical trial of a vaccine against the cancer-causing Epstein-Barr virus.

All three projects launched on 11 November and close on 11 December. The first two are trying to raise £75,000 each and have reached 4 and 3 per cent of that target respectively; the third is trying to raise £40,000 and has achieved 5 per cent so far.