Q & A with Professor Denise Sheer

In the spring/summer 2013 issue of The Grey Matters, our printed newsletter, we featured an interview with Professor Denise Sheer, one of the leading researchers we fund. You can read the full interview below.

Professor Denise Sheer is a researcher at Queen Mary, University of London. She works with her team near Whitechapel in a dedicated building which houses a collection of state of the art research facilities and aims to provide a world-class biomedical research environment.

“We need to understand what causes brain tumours to grow, to develop in the first instance, and then what causes them to respond to one treatment or another.”

Professor Denise Sheer

Why is research funding important?

The funding to the research community is absolutely essential. We need to understand what causes brain tumours to grow, to develop in the first instance, and then what causes them to respond to one treatment or another. We need to provide this essential link between basic science and clinicians.

Why should people support The Brain Tumour Charity?

The way The Brain Tumour Charity funds research is a great example of best practice. The projects are scrutinised thoroughly by independent peer reviewers, which leads to a period of interaction where they suggest ways that the project might be improved. This ultimately ensures that the projects are the best they can possibly be.

Secondly, they support innovative research, and this is exactly what the field needs. Supporter Groups and those affected by brain tumours who want to do something can rest assured that The Charity is doing a fabulous job of advancing brain tumour research.

What do you hope your research project will achieve?

I hope that we will be able to make discoveries that will allow new forms of treatment to be derived. Understanding the molecular basis of these different low grade gliomas will hopefully lead to us discovering a new type of sub-classification.