History of the charity

The charity was founded in 1989 as the Covent Garden Cancer Research Trust, with a mission to raise funds for cancer research. No geographical or other restrictions were placed on grant giving. At that time, the Institute of Urology was a Postgraduate Medical Institute and an independent part of London University.

The charity was founded by John Masters, a cancer research scientist and at that time senior lecturer. Ironically, the need for the charity arose as a result of success in obtaining peer-reviewed funding from major medical research funding agencies. The project grants awarded provided funding for a qualified scientist and consumables costs. However, depending on the funding agency, associated costs such as recruitment, small items of equipment, stationery, photocopying, computer hardware and software, costs of attending meetings and costs of publishing research were not (and often still are not) supported. At a time when the dual support system was being eroded the money needed to support the costs of such project grants was hard to find or simply unavailable (and disappeared altogether over the intervening years)......more History of the Charity