Tessa Jowell BRAIN MATRIX

The criteria are relatively wide, meaning the 10 UK neurocentres taking part will be able to offer the study to more people than any other brain tumour trial.

Initially, it will be open to any adult who is newly diagnosed with a grade 2, 3 or 4 glioma, who is able to undergo a surgical procedure, including biopsy. It will also include adults with recurrent tumours if the clinical team can access an appropriate sample of their original tumour.

The team are working hard to broaden the criteria to include children in the near future.

The study is currently open in 9 of the 10 centres. Click here to find our more. Please discuss the trial and how to be part of it with your consultant.

This ground-breaking study is under the leadership of Professor Colin Watts. Colin is Professor of Neurosurgery at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham and Chair of the University of Birmingham’s Brain Cancer Program. Along with Birmingham, the initial centres that will be able to recruit people onto this study are in Edinburgh, Leeds, Kings College London, Cambridge, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham and Oxford.

All of these locations house major referral centres for people with a suspected glioma, and it means that the majority of people in Scotland and England with a brain tumour will come under their care.

If you are not being treated at one of the recruitment centres and are interested in the study please discuss it with your consultant. You may still be able to be involved in the study, however you will need to be able to travel regularly to one of the centres. The Brain Tumour Charity are NOT able to enroll you directly onto the study.

In the first phase of the study, everyone who takes part will have surgery or a biopsy. The tumour that is removed will then be tested so participants, and the researchers, will know the molecular profile of their tumour. This is called molecular diagnosis.

All participants will receive the current gold standard treatment, along with added monitoring. 

Tessa Jowell BRAIN MATRIX also asks a surgical question “Is the extent of tumour removal through surgery (resection) linked to the molecular diagnosis?” It has previously been reported that the average extent of resection was 73% in patients who have a mutation in a gene called IDH, but only 28% for patients with a tumour where the IDH gene remains normal. Tessa Jowell BRAIN MATRIX will look to verify that finding and also test other molecular markers to see if they find similar differences. They will then use this information to better understand the role of surgery in the treatment plan for people with brain tumours.

Everyone on the trial will also contribute their data to BRIAN, our pioneering app that allows people to track, share and compare their experiences of coping with a brain tumour.

The study has started and is still open and recruiting participants.

The first phase of funding for the study is for 5 years (including the set up period). 

A molecular profile looks for changes (mutations) in the tumour profile compared to the non-tumour profiles (in other words, the norm). Different combinations of changes (different molecular profiles) cause different brain tumours.

It’s important to understand what molecular profile a tumour has, because some drugs only work on certain profiles, and this ensures doctors can give treatments that will work best in each case.

Find out more about biomarker testing

One of the most important things that a clinical study can do for the patients of the future is to collect really good quality data from people going through the new treatments. The data will be used to find patterns in treatment-response and to form new questions that need to be researched.

All the participants of the Tessa Jowell BRAIN MATRIX study will be contributing their information to BRIAN. As this is an inbuilt part of the study, the data collected will be more complete, and therefore of the best quality possible.

A great strength of BRIAN is that it will collect data from clinical sources (i.e. doctors) but it will also enable participants to record their own observations too. In this way people will be able to share what it is really like to be living with a brain tumour, and they will be able to compare their experiences with others going through the same thing.

If you are living with a brain tumour and interested in contributing to BRIAN, you don’t have to be on any studies, just follow the link below to sign up today.

Sign up to BRIAN

• The study was granted ethical approval and was allowed to open in NHS hospitals.

•They first confirmed that each hospital had the local resources to deliver the study to patients and began recruiting patients once this was confirmed. 

• Despite delays caused by the pandemic two recruitment sites opened at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham and King’s College Hospital, London. The team continued to work hard to plan for other recruitment sites during this period. 

• To allow for more patient access to ongoing clinical trials, they continued to engage with potential commercial and academic partners to open new trials that utilise their platform..

• 9 centres have been opened so far and are actively recruiting patients. 

• The team have been working with Genomics England to incorporate the NHS Genomic Medicine Service platform for whole-genome sequencing. This technique can detect the whole genetic make-up of the tumour and has become available as the standard of care for brain cancer patients in England. Genomics England are using BRAIN MATRIX for the rollout of the NHS Genomic Medicine Service platform.

• Recruited 251 patients as of the 27^th of February 2023.  

• • The collaboration with the Genomics England Genomic Medicine Service platform has shown good results with 126 samples submitted, with results being reported for 21 patients.  

• • Working to establish this structure across England as well as establish a similar structure in Scotland, and other nations in the UK.  

• • The first analysis of study data for the first 200 patients was completed. This analysis has shown that some bottlenecking issues with access to tissue samples and this issue has been raised with stakeholders.  

• Partnered with the ARISTOCRAT clinical trial, which opened to recruitment on 3rd February 2023. This trial is testing the use of cannabinoids with chemotherapy for treating people with recurrent glioblastoma. 

• Recruited 390 patients as of the 6^th of March 2024. They opened a new site in Newcastle in November 2023 and they will continue to recruit patients until February 2026.

• • The collaboration with the Genomics England Genomic Medicine Service platform has now shown results for 70 patients. 

• • Whole genome sequencing results are now able to be reported more quickly, which means they are now able to inform patient care.  

• There have been great developments with the imaging aspects of the project with the newly released RANO software tool, which allows clinicians to monitor tumour growth long-term and plan personalised treatment accordingly to an advanced classification algorithm. The team are now building a network of neuro-radiologists to publish their first paper with imaging data and clinical outcomes.