“We need better treatment options for glioblastoma.”

Sudden diagnosis

In January 2018, Catherine Roberts and Bryony Powell were travelling in New Zealand in their campervan when Catherine, a talented netball player who represented Wales and the Celtic Dragons, began to get headaches.

Bryony recalled: “Headaches were out of character for her. They would start suddenly and got worse over the next few weeks. Catherine was very passionate about fitness and nutrition, everything you’re told that gives you a longer life she did, so we didn’t think much more of it. 

“One day at work, she had a severe headache and vomited which was a red flag to us, and we took her to the GP who believed it could be caused by iron deficiency. A week later, she started to fall asleep regularly and became difficult to wake. She also became confused and found it difficult to retain information, escalating to her telling me she had seen a friend of hers that morning who I knew she hadn’t as we were still in New Zealand and her friend was back in Wales. We went back to the GP one week after our first visit, and a week later she had a CT scan revealing the tumour.”  

Catherine, from Blackwood, travelled back to Wales, and hoped to undergo radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatment at Velindre Hospital in Cardiff, but her condition rapidly declined. She died on May 23 2018, just a few months after that first headache. She was 27.

The Catherine Roberts Fund

After losing Catherine, her friends and family set up a Supporter Group, The Catherine Roberts Fund, within The Brain Tumour Charity, to fundraise for research into high grade brain tumours. The fund has recently celebrated raising more than £50,000.

Bryony said: “Catherine absolutely loved life and was always striving for more, and really wanted to make the most of it. Without her, our lives will never be the same again. We don’t want other families to go through the horrible journey that so many of us have.“

We need more research

“It is so important for more money to be invested into the research of glioblastomas, as treatment options such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy aren’t effective at treating them, due to their complex nature and mutation abilities.  

“We need better options as currently, glioblastomas are a death sentence, which isn’t good enough. People deserve a chance to fight it, and with brain tumours being the biggest cancer killer in under 40s, it’s simply not good enough that this area is so under invested.”  

How is our research funding helping?

We have recently funded two new glioblastoma research projects at Cardiff University. These projects aim to find innovative ways to treat this aggressive brain tumour as part of our Future Leaders programme.