75% of cancer research funds goes to pre-clinical work, not patient treatment

Three-quarters of cancer research funding is going into work that aims to further our understanding of the disease, but usually does not involve or benefit patients directly. — dpa

Cancer research funding involves big money, with over US$24 billion (RM110.77 billion) spent worldwide between 2016 and 2020.

But most of that outlay did not go into primary treatment research in fields such as surgery, which got 1.4%, and radiotherapy, which received almost 3%.