Britain’s largest cancer charity has announced new rules to crack down on bullying and harassment.

Cancer Research UK (CRUK) said scientists who bullied or harassed colleagues would face sanctions that could include being prevented from supervising PhD students, losing funding from the charity or being barred from applying for future grants.

The move follows a number of recent high-profile bullying cases and a Guardian investigation that found nearly 300 academics across the UK, including senior professors and laboratory directors, had been reported for bullying in the last few years.

Iain Foulkes, the executive director of research and innovation at CRUK, said the charity wanted to “call out” institutions that failed to provide employees with adequate protection against bullying and harassment at work.

Universities and research institutions will now be required to alert the charity to any live bullying or harassment investigations and to report the outcomes. Failure to comply could see sanctions levied against institutions. In the extreme, this could mean funding being suspended form an entire organisation. “We [will] go as far as we need to go,” said Foulkes. “If an institution doesn’t address what might be perceived as a cultural problem we wouldn’t want to be putting money into that institution.”

The charity spent more than £1.5bn on research during the past five years and funds scientists at dozens of universities.

Earlier this year, the Wellcome Trust announced it was introducing similar anti-bullying rules and in August revoked £3.5m in funding from a top cancer scientist at the Institute of Cancer Research in London who had been accused of bullying by 45 current and former colleagues.

Allegations of bullying have also recently emerged concerning the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge.

Foulkes said the new policy was prompted by a broader conversation in society about acceptable treatment in the workplace following the #MeToo movement. “It made us question whether there was more we could do in science and research,” he said. In academic science, Foulkes said, junior staff and students, who often report exclusively to a principle investigator, can be especially vulnerable without strict anti-bullying rules.