The Medical Research Council Cancer Unit was located in Cambridge and was established in 2001.

It was based within the Hutchison/MRC Research Centre, which in turn is situated on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.

[2] Professor Venkitaraman stepped down from the directorship in November 2019 to take up a new role as director of the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore.

The MRC Cancer Unit was closed at the end of March 2022.

There were seven active research programmes in the Unit, which cover the following areas: chromosomal instability, Barrett's oesophagus and oesohago-gastric carcinoma, cell fate and cancer, lung tumour evolution, cancer metabolism, lymphatics and the tumour microenvironment, and cancer metastasis.