Roy Castle Foundation

Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation is the only UK lung cancer charity dedicated to helping everyone affected by the disease.

Since 1990, when the charity was set up by Professor Ray Donnelly, they have funded millions of pounds of essential lung cancer research, looking for ways to detect the disease as early as possible and save lives.

Roy Castle supports everyone affected by lung cancer – from diagnosis, through treatment, living with the disease and end of life care. They raise awareness, prevent future generations from getting it and challenge the misconceptions of lung cancer. They do all this so those diagnosed can live well with lung cancer for as long as possible.

For the past three decades, Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation has been the driving force behind lung cancer research, investing millions of pounds into the early detection of the disease. They do this because they know if lung cancer is caught early, curative treatment is possible.

Their ongoing commitment and innovation in this field have now paved the way for significant investment from NHS England to fund targeted lung health checks, an early intervention project designed to detect lung cancer before symptoms even appear.

It is their intention that targeted lung health checks provide further evidence to support the implementation of a national lung cancer screening programme and they’re working alongside NHSE to ensure this happens.

This is a significant step forward in the early detection of lung cancer. However, there remain thousands of people who will not benefit from the current projects, or potentially a national lung cancer screening programme – either because of their postcode, their age or the fact that they have never smoked.

Lung cancer does not discriminate. It is a disease that can affect anyone and so we need to continue to develop better screening tools for everyone.

This is exactly what the Roy Castle researchers continue to work on right now. From blood test to cheek swaps, these biomarkers are the long term future of early diagnosis in lung cancer and where our focus remains.

Roy Castle Lung Cancer foundation and NCIMI

Roy Castle lung Cancer foundation has partnered with NCIMI (National Consortium of Intelligent Medical Imaging) to investigate the role that AI can play in medical imaging.

To learn more about them please visit their website.