The Race for Life logo.
Second Logo
Race for Life participants running and smiling while giving each other a high five.

You're helping to fund life-saving research

Our research already helps people living with cancer every single day. With you at the start line, just imagine how far we can go.

Your minimum fundraising target

Race for Life participants walking in a park. One is attaching a back sign which says I Race for Life for my aunty Julie.

When you signed up to Race for Life, you pledged to raise at least £50 to help fund our life-changing cancer research.

We’re the only charity taking on more than 200 types of cancer.

Your fundraising helps us discover new ways to beat all of them and create a future where everybody can live longer, better lives, free from the fear of cancer.

Get some fundraising ideas

How your money helps us beat cancer

An illustration of a pair of pink gloves.

£5 buys a box of 100 gloves, which keep our scientist’s hands safe while they get hands-on with their experiments.

A pink icon of a DNA strand.

£13 buys agarose gel, which is a vital component for a technique that scientists use to measure the length of pieces of DNA.

A pink icon of a microscope.

£22 buys a microscope micrometer, which scientists use to measure the size of tumours and learn more about how they grow.

An icon of a pink flask.

£50 buys special chemicals called restriction enzymes that work like molecular scissors to cut up the long strands of DNA in our cells.

An icon of pink liquid drop.

£95 buys a Wright-Giemsa cell staining kit, which our scientists use to distinguish between different types of blood cells.

An icon of a pink graduation cap.

£200 helps fund a postdoc researcher - developing their skills in the lab under the supervision of expert scientists.

A pink icon of a doctor.

£400 is the cost of running Cancer Chat for one day, helping thousands of people through very difficult times.

Icon of pink radiotherapy machine.

£1,000 helps fund Professor Maria Hawkins and her team as they research innovative radiotherapy techniques for treating rare bile duct cancer

You donate, we discover. Here’s what happens when you give monthly

A scientist in a laboratory holding a flask with pink liquid inside.

When you make regular donations, we fund long-term research. And when we fund long-term research, we make our biggest breakthroughs.

A reliable income means we can plan ahead and commit to long-term research projects with huge potential to help beat cancer.

The impact of monthly donations

How we decide what research to fund

We're beating over 200 types of cancer. When researchers come to Cancer Research UK with their ideas, we need to decide which projects need our support.

Watch this video to see how we ensure the money you raise funds the science that stands the best chance of making a difference.

Check out our Cancer News page to see how the money you raise is helping people to live longer, healthier lives.

Read about our science wins

Hannah's story

Hannah, carrying her young daughter and holding a Race for Life back sign which says I race for me and for Billie's future.

It’s thanks to advances in research and treatments that I’m still here and enjoying my life.

- Hannah