Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress has been made on research into a breath test to enable early detection of Pancreatic Cancer.

The PANACEA study will recruit 8,000 patients across 40 sites by September 2026 to evaluate breath test performance and is expected to complete in March 2027. This is one strand of the Office for Life Sciences’ Cancer Healthcare Goals Programme, which supports the development of technologies that enable earlier, more effective cancer diagnosis and improved treatment. The Department invests over £1.6 billion per year in health research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). NIHR spent £133 million on cancer research in 2023/24.