Chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathy is a major clinical challenge – impacting on quality of life for those affected, as well as on delivery of effective oncological therapy, with dose reduction or even treatment cessation potentially being required during chemotherapy. Longstanding problems can affect around a third of those who have received neurotoxic chemotherapy, used in the treatment of many common cancer types. Understanding who gets CIPN and why is complex, but important, in order to allow patients and clinicians to work together to make informed treatment choices and to develop targeted approaches to prevention and management.  Identifying who is at increased risk of CIPN, can be used not only to inform clinical practice but also to refine the design of CIPN prevention trials – an area where there has been some failure of translation from promising preclinical evidence. Ensuring that preclinical models and assessment techniques are relevant to the clinical syndrome should also be combined with the involvement of people living with CIPN throughout the whole research lifecycle, to try and address some of the factors that may have contributed to the persistence of this clinical problem with currently limited effective preventive or therapeutic options.