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Brain tumour research

Barts Brain Tumour Centre

Brain tumours kill more people under the age of 40 than any other cancer, and 80% of people diagnosed with a brain tumour die within 5 years. Malignant gliomas are the most common intrinsic brain tumours in adults. They grow highly invasively, cannot be completely resected by surgery and are resistant to conventional anticancer treatments. The overall survival of patients with a newly diagnosed glioblastoma is only 14 months. In fact, survival of these patients has not improved over the last 20 years, a rare exception to the general trend of cancer survival in the UK.

This award wishes to build upon the success of the Charity's previous seed funding of £200,000 which enabled the Brain Tumour Research Centre to secure additional funding. When the Centre was established, its main focus was to research the molecular and cellular mechanisms regulating the development and growth of gliomas. The applicants now wish to develop a clinical platform at SMD and Barts Health to ensure basic science discoveries can be swiftly taken to the clinic and more effective experimental treatments can be offered to patients.

This aim will be achieved by building a translational research platform to allow the inclusion of Barts Health patients in research trials, leading to a significant increase in the amount of experimental treatments available to patients.

Glioblastoma cells growing in a plastic dish

Professor Silvia Marino

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