NCRI conference draws to a close

05 November 2019

Today is the third and final day of #NCRI2019 in Glasgow.

The National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) is a UK-wide partnership between cancer research funders, which promotes collaboration in cancer research. Its member organisations, which include Brain Tumour Research, work together to maximise the value and benefit of cancer research for the benefit of patients and the public.

Its annual conference is an opportunity for like-minded individuals to meet, network and learn of new developments in cancer research covering the entire research spectrum. It is the ideal situation for worldwide researcher collaborations to be established.

Pictured at the conference is our Chief Executive Sue Farrington Smith MBE with NCRI Chair and Chief Executive of Breast Cancer Now, Baroness Delyth Morgan.

Asked about being an NCRI partner Sue said: “Partnering provides an important platform for furthering the cause of research into brain tumours. The NCRI delivers mentorship and a collaborative environment for addressing common challenges. Bringing our community’s voice and insights from our Research Centres, we can lead work on initiatives relevant to our site-specific and the wider cancer agenda.”

This year’s conference included several presentations of relevance to the brain tumours, which demonstrates how far we’ve come in advances in this historically underfunded field of research. One announcement made at the conference of particular interest to our community concerned the chemical analysis of blood samples being combined with an artificial intelligence programme to possibly speed up the diagnosis of brain tumours. The test works by detecting chemical clues shed by brain tumours into the blood and could be a part of improving brain tumour survival one day by making diagnosis quicker and more efficient. There will be more on this in our weekly research round up which you can read every Saturday.