The European Association for Cancer Research (EACR) partners with CancerTools.org to promote the global accessibility of research tools. Here the CancerTools.org team tells us a little more about how sharing the cancer research tools you’ve developed – like a specific antibody or a genetically modified cell line – can benefit you as well as other researchers around the world, and help to push forward the progress of cancer research.
CancerTools.org is the latest non-profit initiative on a mission to accelerate cancer research by making your tools available to fellow scientists across the globe. From antibodies to cell lines, organoids and cell culture media, your research tools play a critical role in the discoveries made in cancer research. If you develop a tangible research material in your lab for a specific project, the scope and outreach of the tool can be further enhanced post project conclusion through CancerTools.org.
CancerTools.org solution to cancer scientists is multi-faceted. Embedded within our wider mission to accelerate cancer research globally, is a commitment to provide scientists with a centralised, non-profit resource to deposit and access tangible research materials. In particular, we understand the challenge that scientists face in trying to make their tools available to their fellow researchers. Responding to requests for materials, arranging production, storage, and delivery requires a huge amount of time and responsibility outside of core research.
Let’s step back and set this scene:
- You may be a principal investigator or researcher unravelling the next big cancer research question. In doing so, you require the right tools – be it a specific antibody, a genetically modified cell line, 3D models like organoids or specialist cell culture media.
- You develop the requisite tool– spending time, money, resources, and using complex techniques.
- Your research question is answered, and results are published in a peer-reviewed journal, sharing your findings with scientists globally.
- Likeminded researchers start to take interest in accessing the tools you published. With teaching commitments, grant applications and other administrative tasks, your focused research time is limited, making it challenging to coordinate Material Transfer Agreements (MTA’s) together with the logistics of shipping tools across borders, sometimes in a controlled environment.
- Given its value to other cancer researchers, you still want your inventions to be accessible.
This is where CancerTools.org steps in
This is where CancerTools.org steps in – the first, cancer-focused, non-profit, biorepository where you can deposit the tangible cancer research materials developed in your lab. We have acquired the expertise, global presence, and operational structure to assist you and your lab in sourcing and managing your research tools, including production and related logistics. Having a strategic expert partner protects your research tools and provides them with a future – ensuring they can be accessed by cancer scientists via our e-commerce platform. With global partnerships at 175+ institutes, including a partnership with the European Association for Cancer Research, we’re able to promote your research tools to a targeted audience, helping other scientists to find more information on you and your research; providing new collaboration opportunities, and increasing the potential for your tool to be used in research areas and projects that extend beyond your cancer research realm.
As a partner of CancerTools.org, the European Association for Cancer Research (EACR) invites you to deposit your research tool and increase your impact.
Play a part in advancing cancer research within your lab and globally by getting started with the new home for your cancer research tools at CancerTools.org/contribute.
About CancerTools.org
CancerTools.org is the research tools arm of Cancer Research UK – a non-profit, global research tools collaborative where researcher deposit their tools to help drive innovation within cancer research.
