The NIHR funds and delivers world-leading healthcare research to improve people’s lives and wellbeing. It aims to improve the health and welfare of the nation through research and by investing in world-class expertise and facilities.
The two calls to support research into brain tumours aim to develop and deliver new treatments for brain tumours and improvements to patient care.
Building a national research consortium
The first call will be an evaluation of novel therapies and optimisation of brain tumour treatments. This will be shaped by a new national NIHR Brain Tumour Research Consortium. It will look to capitalise on recent developments in precision medicine. It will also build capacity by bringing new researchers into the field and supporting early career researchers to focus on brain cancer. The next stage of this call will be a workshop of interested stakeholders in December 2024.
Improving care
The second call will generate high quality evidence in brain tumour care, support and rehabilitation. This aims to build research evidence on interventions such as rehabilitation for patients with brain tumours.
Research funding
This research funding will leverage the remaining money that was ring-fenced by the government for research into brain tumours in 2018 in honour of Dame Tessa Jowell and in recognition of the poor outcomes for many patients.
The brain tumour community has lobbied for many years for this money to be released, including when more than 80,000 people signed a petition calling for this, led by our colleagues at Brain Tumour Research.
The Brain Tumour Charity has committed research funding of over £50 million since 2017, including two clinical trials. And we are committed to continuing to fund high quality research in the future. You can read more about what research we fund here.
We are heartened by the news that the national funding organisation, NIHR, is finally going to spend this money, as more research funding for brain tumours is urgently needed. This adds to the wider research landscape including funding already provided by The Brain Tumour Charity and other research organisations. We look forward to contributing to the workshops in December and using our experience of delivering research programmes with our colleagues to add our expertise to the conversation and shape the consortium's future direction.
Dr Michele Afif, CEO