World Cancer Research Day: Disrupting Glioblastoma Through Collaboration

Every World Cancer Research Day (24 September) is a reminder that research is not abstract. It is the reason survival rates improve, the reason families gain more time, and the reason bold ideas become life-changing therapies. Behind every treatment, there is research.

For glioblastoma, the deadliest and most stubborn brain cancer, the researchers working behind the scenes are the heroes of the story. NuCapCure, a European consortium funded by the European Innovation Council, is uniting chemists, biologists and physicists around a single ambition: to develop tumour-directed, particle-enabled therapies that may finally shift outcomes in glioblastoma.

NuCapCure’s highly motivated research team brings new ideas, advanced techniques and innovative approaches, from chemistry to physics, that together create possibilities no single field could achieve alone. This multidisciplinarity is the engine of disruptive cancer therapies.

Glioblastoma grows fast, infiltrates healthy brain tissue and resists existing treatments. Surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy are demanding and rarely curative. This impasse is why NuCapCure thinks differently: instead of attacking from the outside, the team is designing molecules that slip into the tumour’s own haem-biosynthesis pathways and become lethal only when triggered by protons or neutrons. Destroying the cancer cell from within. It is the precision of physics and photobiology meeting the creativity of chemistry. The project’s disruptive edge.

Collaboration is not an afterthought. It is the method. Partners from academia, clinics and industry across Europe are each contributing a vital piece of the puzzle. By combining cutting-edge research with top scientific institutions, NuCapCure is building an approach that is truly greater than the sum of its parts. That is how disruptive ideas become durable science.

This is the story we celebrate on World Cancer Research Day: not just what NuCapCure is doing today, but what it represents. A new model of European research where multidisciplinary teams tackle urgent problems with bold science. Glioblastoma may be one of oncology’s hardest frontiers, but it is also where breakthroughs will have immense impact.

This year’s call — Cancer research needs us all — resonates deeply with NuCapCure. By connecting disciplines, institutions and people across Europe, the project proves that progress only happens together. This World Cancer Research Day, NuCapCure shows that the future of cancer treatment will be written collectively: by researchers, policymakers, innovators and society.