Cancer Research UK's smartphone game to help find a cure for cancer has opened up a new international audience for the charity, with 70 per cent of downloads coming from outside of the UK. 

Since Cancer Research UK launched its groundbreaking smartphone game last month  it has been downloaded over 150,000 times.

Hannah Keartland, citizen science lead at CRUK, was speaking at CFG’s IT conference earlier this week when she revealed that most of the Genes In Space players were from outside of the UK.

“It’s opened up a completely new audience for us,” she said.

CRUK’s first citizen science initiative, Cell Slider, also attracted a large international audience, with 50 per cent of those comparing different slides coming from outside of the UK.

Earlier this month CRUK announced that in the first month people playing the game had analysed the same amount data that it would have taken scientists six months to do.

Keartland also revealed that the top two spots on the games leader board were held by a retired couple who have embraced the game. “They are now going to be helping us with future development,” she said.

In terms of developing more citizen science projects, Keartland said: “We think the potential is huge – the most important thing is to talk to the scientists about what computers can do, or will soon be able to do – there’s no point building something for people to do if it can be done better by computers.”

She added: “We have also been thinking a lot about finding the right partners – we know we are not a games developer, and we don’t want to compete with the likes of Angry Birds.”