ESTRO 2024 - Abstract Book

S2864

Interdisciplinary - Health economics & health services research

ESTRO 2024

3202

Proffered Paper

Global public and philanthropic investment in radiotherapy-related research between 2016-2020

Chris M Jones 1,2 , Wee Han Ng 3 , Yousif Badri 4 , Edward Christopher 4 , Lewis Germain 4 , Nathaniel L Hatton 4 , Joanna Kucharczak 2 , Annabel Lyles 4 , Dylan McClurg 2 , Daniel Otter 4 , Chandan Sanghera 2 , Ramsay Cutress 5 , Michael Head 5 , Stuart McIntosh 6 , Katie Spencer 7,4 1 University of Cambridge, Department of Oncology, Cambridge, United Kingdom. 2 Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, United Kingdom. 3 University of Bristol, Faculty of Health Sciences, Bristol, United Kingdom. 4 Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Leeds Cancer Centre, Leeds, United Kingdom. 5 University of Southampton, Faculty of Medicine, Southampton, United Kingdom. 6 Queen's University Belfast, School of Medicine, Belfast, United Kingdom. 7 University of Leeds, Leeds Institue of Health Sciences, Leeds, United Kingdom There is increasing recognition of a disparity between the critical role played by radiotherapy in cancer care and the research activity apportioned to its development and delivery. Exemplifying this, less than 10% of clinical trials focus on radiotherapy 1 . There is in addition evidence of global disparities in radiotherapy research activity, with over half of all radiotherapy-related publications originating from North America and Europe 2 . The drivers of these patterns in research activity are uncertain, though the extent of public and philanthropic funding is thought to be a major variable. Given this, we sought to analyse the research phase and focus, tumour type and location of global radiotherapy-related research funding between 2016-2020 and to correlate this with cancer burden. Public and philanthropic research funding awards related to cancer and radiotherapy that were granted globally between 1st January 2016 and 31st December 2020 were identified from the Dimensions database. This includes 6 million health and non-health related funding awards totalling US$2.3 trillion invested by 656 global funding bodies. Awards focussed on cancer and relating to humans were identified from descriptive labels and key word searches. Radiotherapy-related awards were then manually selected. Funding was adjusted for inflation in the source currency prior to conversion to 2020 US dollars using the mean exchange rate for the year of funding. The title and abstract for each award were manually screened and awards categorised by country of origin, funder, phase of research and tumour type, study intent, research aims/outcomes and radiotherapy approach. These data were correlated with disease burden, which was assessed by tumour site incidence and disease adjusted life years, as extracted from the 2019 Global Burden of Disease study 3 . Purpose/Objective: Material/Methods:

Results:

Radiotherapy research accounted for 4.6% ($1.14 billion, 2,942 awards) of the US$24.5 billion (66,388 awards) invested in cancer research between 2016-2020. The value of awards fell from $279 million in 2016 to $193 million and $116 million in 2019 and 2020, respectively. Of the total radiotherapy investment from 2016 to 2020, 65.7%