Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has announced that an estimated £20 million in funding will be invested through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) over the next 5 years.
The funding will start with a formal call to research teams to put forward new proposals, to access NIHR funding in April. In addition, Cancer Research UK will invest £25 million in research into brain tumours over the next 5 years. This is on top of £13 million each year on the research and development of cancer treatments.
Cancer Research UK’s funding will support 2 new specialised centres:
- The Children’s Brain Tumour Centre of Excellence, based at the University of Cambridge
- The Institute of Cancer Research, London
These centres bring together world-leading experts to discover and develop new treatments to tackle brain tumours in children. A centre focusing on adult brain tumours will open later this year.
This new funding is hugely welcomed. While cancer survival rates are at a record high, the prognosis for people with brain tumours has barely improved in a generation.
This new funding will give the scientific community a needed cash boost so we can explore new treatments and improvements to diagnosis for what is one of the deadliest forms of cancer.’
Sir Harpal Kumar, Cancer Research UK Chief Executive, said: ''Brain tumours remain a huge challenge, with survival barely improving over the last 30 years. Since we laid out our plans to tackle this challenge in 2014, Cancer Research UK has already substantially increased its funding into brain tumours and attracted some of the world’s leading experts to the UK. This new funding will mean that we can accelerate these efforts further, by developing a critical mass of expertise in key areas and supporting work along the entire research pipeline to improve survival for children and adults with brain tumours."
Each year around 11,400 people in the UK are diagnosed with a brain tumour and just 14% of people survive their disease for 10 or more years.
Last year, I visited a local charity that helps people with brain tumours and other brain injuries. Headway, in Gosport, provides support and advice to patients and their families suffering the effects of brain injury, including that caused by tumours. Brain injuries and the conditions associated with them are often called the ‘hidden disability’, because their effects may not always be apparent to people. Headway are helping to increase awareness of these conditions, as well as providing support to those who are facing the challenges of coping with them.