Edinburgh Cancer Research

£1.5m to fund Brain Tumour Centre of Excellence

Cancer Research UK Edinburgh Centre researchers have received £1.5 million for research to better understand brain tumours, one of the hardest types of cancer to treat: August 2018

S.Pollard research

The investment from Cancer Research UK will fund a new Brain Tumour Centre of Excellence to help find new treatments for both childhood and adult brain tumours.

Professor Margaret Frame will lead the team in Edinburgh as part of a £3 million joint grant with scientists at University College London.

The centre will build better links between scientists and doctors to help drive progress in finding new treatments for glioma, the most common type of brain tumour.

Researchers will combine data from health records with genetic information and molecular imaging to build a fuller picture of the disease.

This could help doctors make more informed decisions on which patients will respond best to which treatments.

Whilst survival for many types of cancer has improved dramatically over the last 40 years, tackling brain tumours remains a real challenge and they take the lives of far too many people each year.

We need a better biological understanding of what makes brain tumours vulnerable to help find new treatments with less harsh side effects.

Looking mainly at glioblastoma, the most aggressive form of adult brain tumour, we will harness the knowledge and skills of scientists from physics, engineering, maths and other disciplines to improve our understanding of the disease.

 It’s important to train doctors so that they are armed with this knowledge when they are selecting patients for clinical trials. That’s also what we hope this centre will achieve, building the next generation of clinician scientists in brain tumours.

Professor Steve PollardGroup Leader at the Cancer Research UK Edinburgh Centre

This investment is further recognition of the Cancer Research UK Edinburgh Centre’s reputation as a world leader in brain tumour research.

In 2016, Professor Steve Pollard and his team at the University of Edinburgh were awarded £3.7 million by the charity to study the faulty molecules that underpin brain tumours by taking samples from patients’ tumours during surgery and then growing the brain tumour cells in the lab.

And earlier this year, Professors Margaret Frame and Valerie Brunton and their teams at the Cancer Research UK Edinburgh Centre were awarded £2.4 million to carry out ground breaking research to find new ways to tackle glioblastoma.

With this further £1.5 million investment, Edinburgh is continuing to gain momentum in brain tumour research. The centre will enable us to make the most of our strengths in science, technology and data expertise to help save the lives of more people with brain tumours in the city – and across the UK – in the future.

Professor Steve PollardGroup Leader at the Cancer Research UK Edinburgh Centre

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