Every penny you raise will go towards the ground-breaking and life saving work that Cancer Research UK do. Here are some examples of how it can be spent and the valuable work that it does…

• £10 could buy 300 glass slides for studying cells and tumour samples in detail under the microscope.

• £22 could equip a scientist with a lab coat and a pair of safety goggles. These help protect against harmful chemicals and prevent experiments from getting contaminated.

• £30 could buy around 250 plastic petri dishes. They're an essential resource for thousands of scientists who are working hard to understand cancer.

• £43 could buy around 500 cryotubes, needed for the protective storing of cell samples at very low temperatures.

• £52 could buy 5 digital timers – essential to allow cancer researchers to carry out precisely timed experiments.

£51 to £500

• £54 could buy 22 thermometers (range -10°C to 110°C) – indispensible for many experiments that need to be performed at very precise temperatures.

• £94 could cover the basic costs for one woman to take part in a clinical trial testing a new way of giving hormone therapy to improve the treatment of breast cancer.

• £124 could fund one cancer information nurse for a day. Our experienced cancer information nurses provide a confidential service for anyone with concerns about cancer.*

• £260 could buy a sophisticated microarray; a powerful piece of technology, helping scientists to scrutinise thousands of genes in a single experiment, and identify which are switched on in cancer.

• £300 could buy a water bath, a heatable tank of water which scientists use on a daily basis. Some reactions need to happen at particular temperatures. The thermostat on a bath can help maintain this from room temperature anywhere up to 95ºC.

£501 to £5,000

• £510 could pay for ten pairs of cryogenic gloves, worn when retrieving very cold samples from a -80ºC freezer or a liquid nitrogen storage tank.

• £715 could support one of our PhD students for a week. At Cancer Research UK, we nurture talented young researchers as they train to become independent scientists.

• £867 could fund one cancer information nurse for one week. Our experienced cancer information nurses provide a confidential service for anyone with concerns about cancer.*

• £1,000 could cover around two months’ running expenses for a clinical trial investigating hormone therapy to improve the treatment of prostate cancer.

• £2,770 could pay for 3 week’s supply of the drug pravastatin for the LungStar clinical trial. This trial aims to discover whether adding pravastatin to chemotherapy is beneficial for people with small cell lung cancer.

• £2,979 could cover the basic costs for one patient to take part on a clinical trial to improve treatment of a type of head and neck cancer. The trial is testing if a new way of delivering radiotherapy can help reduce hearing loss, a common side effect of treatment.

• £3,757 could fund one cancer information nurse for a month. Our experienced cancer information nurses provide a confidential service for anyone with concerns about cancer.*

• £4,000 could buy a -80°C freezer, essential for the long-term storage of biological samples that provide the vital raw material for research

£5,001 to £50,000

• £6,000 could buy a special safety cabinet, enabling scientists to carry out crucial experiments with cells in culture, free of the risk of contamination from air-borne germs.

• £20,000 could cover around one year's running expenses for an important lab project into a type of children's cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma. The study aims to identify molecules that are involved in driving tumour growth, and this could lead to improved treatments so that more children survive the disease in the future.

• £40,000 could buy a bench-top ultra speed centrifuge, used on a daily basis by Cancer Research UK-funded scientists in the analysis of DNA or proteins from cancer cells.

• £45,083 could fund one cancer information nurse for a year. Our experienced cancer information nurses provide a confidential service for anyone with concerns about cancer.*

£50,001 to £millions

• £52,000 could cover just over 6 months of running costs for a large-scale clinical trial testing whether a drug called celecoxib can help to prevent bladder cancer from coming back after treatment.

• £75,600 could fund around one year of a national clinical trial to find the best dose of radiotherapy to use when treating patients with a type of lymphoma – cancer of the immune system.

• We have a special unit in Glasgow where promising new drug discoveries are turned into tablets, capsules or injections. £158,000 could help us develop the best ways to deliver brand new drugs to patients by covering the running expenses of this unit for 5 months.

• £174,000 could cover around a years' running costs for two large, related clinical trials looking to improve radiotherapy for breast cancer. The jointly run trials are testing whether new ways of giving radiotherapy to the breast are as effective as the standard treatment and can reduce the risk of long term side effects.

• £250,000 could buy a piece of equipment called a DNA sequencer which could help identify potential new cancer genes.

• £337,000 could cover all the costs of our Cancer Information Nurses for around one year. These nurses provide a confidential service for anyone with concerns about cancer.*

• £550,000 could fund a large programme of research for around one year aiming to discover new drugs to treat breast cancers that are resistant to other treatments. Finding effective new treatments for women with cancer that no longer responds to chemotherapy drugs or to hormone therapy is crucial if we are to improve their chances of surviving the disease.

• £860,000 could cover the cost of running a lab within the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute for around a year. Scientists at the institute are conducting intricate lab studies to discover exactly how and why cancer develops. This knowledge is essential for developing new ways of preventing, diagnosing and treating cancer.