COVID-19 Research Policy

Universities have been exempted from the current lockdown and university labs have put a range of measures in place to ensure safe working and social distancing. Over the summer, our scientists returned to their labs and we recommend that they continue to access their lab as long as they can safely travel to work, and work safely, without causing any undue risk to their own health and the health of others.

We continue to recommend that those parts of their work which can be done from home continue to be done from home, and PCR staff continue to work from home.

To minimise our risk of spreading COVID-19, and to protect the welfare of our staff, all PCR staff have been working from home as of 17th March 2020. We will continue to do so until government advice and our own monitoring of the situation assures us that it is safe to return to work. We have taken steps to ensure minimal disruption to our supporters and our work while our office is closed.

We have also cancelled all of our events, to protect the welfare of our supporters.

We know how much people whose lives have been touched by prostate cancer don’t want research to stop. Many universities have taken the decision to close their labs to all but essential and/or COVID-19 work during this time. Our position is that as much work as possible should be done from home, and if this means moving project milestones, we support that.

We have had individual conversations with all of our funded research teams to ensure that as much research as possible can continue during the lockdown. Almost all of our researchers have some work which they can do from home and in some cases, it is possible for researchers to work from home in the medium-to-long term.

We remain committed to supporting our current researchers through this difficult and unprecedented time. We understand that the current situation will cause delays to some milestones, and will continue to be flexible and understanding.

If and when it becomes necessary to put a research project into abeyance, we will work with others to establish how salaries can be supported to the greatest extent possible. When normal access to labs resumes, we will offer extensions where they are needed to make up time lost to COVID-19.

Our lines of communication remain open and we will make any decisions necessary on a project-by-project basis.

We are also committed to the welfare of our funded researchers and have encouraged them to contact us with any questions, concerns, or should circumstances change during this period. We do not recommend that scientists funded by us travel to their laboratories during this period. However, we recognise that this is a conversation and decision between the scientist and their university (their employer). If a scientist does travel and enter a lab during this time, we hope that the university has thought about and mitigated all risks to the safety and welfare of the scientist and others, including the general public.

We realise that families still need better treatments for cancer. We acknowledge that COVID-19 has impacted upon our finances, but having first established that we could do so without compromising our commitments to our current research and researchers, we have launched our 2020 funding call as planned.