COVID-19 has been, and continues to be, a threat on a global scale. The “other C” that is on everyone’s mind has brought forth an unprecedented co-ordinated global response to find a solution to the problem. Scientists in labs all over the world have made truly amazing progress over the last months, culminating in the recent announcements that have made a vaccine a reality.

It is heartening to see that, with substantial financial backing, focussing all our efforts on a single health problem can speed up scientific progress in this way.

Having witnessed these amazing achievements, it is worth thinking about what other health problems we can focus our collective brain power on. Another “big C” comes to mind – cancer. Why, after so much investment, do we still seem so helpless in the face of cancer? As a researcher and doctor who has seen first-hand the lifesaving potential of new targeted therapies for cancer, my opinion is that we are far from helpless.

In these dark times, there have been some positives for cancer research. The charity Worldwide Cancer Research, of which I am the chair of their Scientific Advisory Committee, were able to commit more than £3 million to funding new research projects this year. These 16 projects will start in 2021 and provide hope that we will be able to continue starting new cures for cancer despite the impact Covid-19 is having on fundraising efforts.

While individual cancer diagnoses remain one of the scariest conversations people can have with their doctor, it is worth stepping back to look at the bigger picture. Over the last 40 years, research has made astonishing progress and survival rates for many cancers have increased dramatically over the last decades.

Survival rates for many cancers have soared. Years of research means that nine out of 10 people diagnosed with testicular cancer today will still be here 10 years down the line. Three-quarters of children diagnosed with cancer now survive their disease beyond 10 years – a huge improvement from about a third of children diagnosed with cancer 40 years ago.

We, as scientists, clinicians and people who help fund the research behind these successes are rightly proud of this progress. But we are not done yet. The 10-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer remains at 5%. For lung cancer it’s 10%. Finding a cure for cancer has never been realistic – because we will need much more than that. There is not one cancer, but more than 200 different types, each needing a potentially different treatment approach. But imagine what we could do for cancer patients with the same energy and determination that we are showing right now to fight Covid-19.

And while we can – and should – celebrate the advances science has made in the last few months, we also need to remember who makes this research possible. More than half of the UK’s medical research is funded by medical research charities. Charities that are supported by the kindness and generosity of the public.

The AMRC (Association of Medical Research Charities) recently reported that its 152 member charities, who spent £1.9 billion in 2019 on research, had to furlough 34% of their staff, cut or cancel 18% of their research in universities and experienced an average loss of 38% of fundraising income in the period between March and May 2020 compared to the previous year.

Two-thirds of these charities were forced to defer or withdraw funding for upcoming grant rounds. These cuts are likely to have a big impact on research in the years to come, which in turn will influence how many treatments will make it into clinical trials and help patients. After all this success – both in the fight against Covid-19 and cancer – we cannot let the research pipeline run dry.

Covid-19 undoubtedly slowed scientific research all over the world in 2020, but science has not stopped completely. Scientists supported by Worldwide Cancer Research have contributed to several important breakthroughs in 2020 – including a new cancer vaccine that could enter clinical trials within the next three years and a game-changing treatment for prostate cancer that could be available to patients within four years.

The type of research Worldwide Cancer Research funds is what we call discovery research. It’s the starting point from which new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer emerge. Without it we would not have the foundations to build on and we could miss out on future lifesaving discoveries. We must continue to fund this type of research to keep the ideas flowing down the pipeline – now is the time to invest in our future. As we have seen with the amazing response to Covid-19, research is essential to progress. And putting money behind research and those that fund it means that we can make progress faster.

People have woken up to the power of science and research to solve global problems. With one in two of us in the UK predicted to receive a cancer diagnosis during our lifetime, this is the time to use the momentum we have gained and use it to tackle the “big C”.