In 2020, 19 million people around the world received a cancer diagnosis. By 2040, that number is expected to reach 28 million. Poorer countries will be especially hard hit, with an increasing number of cases and more deaths, compared with richer countries.
Cancer research is vital to helping ease this global burden, but where and how research money is spent doesn’t always match with where and how help is needed. To get a clearer picture of where cancer research funding is spent, we collected and compiled data covering public and charitable cancer research investments, globally, between 2016 and 2020, inclusive. This amounted to US$24.5 billion (£19.7 billion) of investment across 66,388 research grants.
By country, the US provided 57.3% of the total cancer research funding awarded, with the US National Institute of Health being by far the biggest funder. Most of the world’s biggest funders are transparent about their funding decisions, providing data on their grants. This allows for scrutiny around their portfolios and allows those who set funding priorities to better understand how to allocate limited resources for health research.
