Scottish scientists have been awarded a £3.5m funding boost from Cancer Research UK to pioneer new radiotherapy technologies and techniques that could help more people survive cancer in the future.

Experts from the Cancer Research UK Glasgow Centre will be funded to the tune of £3.5 million over the next five years to lead what has been called the next generation of developments in the treatment of cancer.

The Glasgow Centre has been chosen to be one of just seven centres of excellence in a UK-wide network that will accelerate advances in radiotherapy research. Centres will also be located in Manchester, Cambridge, Oxford, Leeds and London.

Cancer Research UK is investing a total of £56 million in what is known as the Cancer Research UK RadNet – the charity’s largest ever investment in radiotherapy research.

More than 130,000 patients in the UK are treated with radiotherapy on the NHS every year. In its simplest form, the treatment works by targeting tumours with x-ray radiation, killing cancer cells by irreversibly damaging their DNA - a treatment started almost a century ago.

In Glasgow, the funding will support researchers to develop and test new radiotherapy-drug combinations and new radiotherapy techniques.

Professor Anthony Chalmers, Chair of Clinical Oncology at the University of Glasgow, and lead researcher for the Centre, said: “We are very proud that Glasgow has been awarded this grant to bring the next generation of radiotherapy treatments to patients sooner.”