BELFAST, Ireland, August 15, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

UK based scientists have urged the public to back a funding platform in a bid to accelerate the search for the cure for cancer.

     (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160812/397754 )

ResearchFunderNI.com is an online platform, which invites people to invest money in projects in exchange for rewards, can help intensify research programmes to find treatments for all types of the disease.

Which include breast, colorectal, lung and blood cancers.

Crowd funding is a relatively new way for raising money and Professor Ken Mills who works at the Cancer Research and Cell Biology centre at Queen's University, Belfast, claims it would have massive benefits.

The platform create by Professor Ken Mills and his team at Queen's University, Belfast is based on his belief that research is being held back because of limited funding for smaller projects, which he said were vital for providing pilot data needed for larger scale studies.

He said: "One of the barriers to cancer research is that the large scale research projects often rely on data obtained for pilots. Funding for small-scale projects can be difficult to obtain and that's why we're using technology to create a platform in essence to digitally disrupt how funding for early stage cancer research is sourced. We estimate that such funding could accelerate the speed at which new cancer drugs could be used in clinics by up to 12 years."

Eight research campaigns have already been launched in an attempt to raise up to £100,000 on http://www.ResearchFunderNI.com

Projects range from the purchase of essential equipment for pilots such as an ultra-cold freezer to maintain the stability of samples at minus eighty degrees, to repurposing existing safe and approved drugs by applying them in new therapies for breast cancer."

Dr Jonathan Coulter is of the researchers at the cancer centre who is using the crowd funding platform to in an effort to raise £25,000 for his idea to use gold particles during radiotherapy to increase the effectiveness of targeting and killing prostate cancer stem cells.

He said: "Almost 30% of patients with locally advanced prostate cancer will develop progressive disease with limited treatment options. The research aims to prove the increased curability of particular prostate cancer. By crowdsourcing the funding will mean that we can act faster and deliver results more quickly."

In exchange for donations members of the public are being offered the chance to see at first hand ongoing work in the laboratories at Queen's as well as getting regular updates on research progress.

SOURCE ResearchFunderNI