Help us change the story for brain tumour patients in Scotland

We need your help to open the first Brain Tumour Research Centre of Excellence in Scotland which will bring much-needed hope to those affected by one of the
deadliest forms of this disease.

The new Scottish Brain Tumour Research Centre of Excellence will bring together the largest group of world-leading brain cancer experts in the UK to accelerate research into glioblastoma (GBM).

 

Your donation will help them get clinical trials underway for this highly aggressive
brain tumour which has a devastatingly short average survival time of just 12-18 months.

 

Our aim is to open the Centre early next year. It will host scientists from the
universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow focused on ensuring promising new scientific discoveries are progressed into trials to bring patients benefit now and in the future.

 

Brain Tumour Research is focused on finding a cure for all types of brain tumours and
the new Centre will be our first in Scotland, harnessing the brain power of Scottish researchers to benefit Scottish patients. We are collaborating with Beatson Cancer Charity to achieve this.

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Each day of research costs £2,740 and your donation will make a real impact, enabling life-saving research into brain tumours in Scotland and ultimately
helping to find a cure for this devastating disease.

Help us change the story for Scotland. Please donate today.

Please give what you can. Any amount will make an impact and don’t forget to Gift Aid your donation.

Together we will find a cure.

Donation amounts:

 £25 will fund a PhD student for a morning to carry out discovery research, helping to accelerate the journey to breakthroughs that could lead to new clinical trials and kinder treatments 

£50 will pay for an hour of a Senior Research Fellow’s day running the lab, developing and co-ordinating vital research projects from the team of PhD students 


£100 will fund a morning’s work by one of our scientists investigating gene sequencing to help discover new drug targets for GBM tumours 

Donate to make a difference

How is glioblastoma (GBM) currently treated? 

Surgery to remove as much of the tumour as is possible and safe is the first option for the treatment of a GBM. Unfortunately, the diffuse nature of GBM means that some tumour cells will almost always be left behind and continue to grow. For this reason, radiotherapy and chemotherapy are the next stages of treatment.  

Usually, people are offered the chemotherapy drug temozolomide alongside radiotherapy, and then further doses of temozolomide afterwards. Research into new treatments, such as immunotherapy and targeted therapies, is ongoing, and these treatments may offer hope for improved outcomes in the future.  

At present, there is no known cure for GBM which is why we need your help. 

What research would the Scottish Centre be undertaking?

The Brain Tumour Research Scottish Centre of Excellence would bridge the gap between the discovery of potential new treatments for GBM and getting this treatment into patients. It is very hard to attract funding for this kind of translational research.  

By robustly testing promising new drugs and drug combinations on their world-class drug discovery platform, they will generate the preclinical proof-of-concept data to support clinical trial development.  This will provide trial funders with the information they need to invest in trials, and as such, increase the number of clinical trials for GBM patients in Scotland and the rest of the UK. 

 

Our Centre would be home to the largest group of multidisciplinary GBM researchers in the UK, and over the course of five years it would further develop its drug discovery platform to better replicate real-world tumours, to include changes brought about by chemotherapy and radiotherapy, as well as contain the immune cells that influence to tumour growth.  

 

The real-world accuracy of the testing platform would ensure that the results from any potential drug testing are more reliable and will increase the likelihood of the drugs continuing to work in human trials – an area where a lot of new discoveries fail. 

 

The Centre will also prioritise the development of a new cohort of young, translationally-focused scientists and clinicians, building a community of researchers who will make a clinical impact in the years to come. 

Why do we want to fund it, and how will it sit with other Brain Tumour Research Centres of Excellence?

At present, we are supporting two Centres of Excellence that are already doing ground-breaking work on glioblastoma: Imperial College London and Queen Mary University of London. The research team at Imperial College London is working to improve the effectiveness of current treatments, and the team over at Queen Mary is delving into the biology of GBM tumours to find out more about what makes a tumour to grow and how this could be exploited.

The Scottish Centre, based at the Universities of Edinburgh and University of Glasgow, complements this existing portfolio because it is focused the gap between the discovery of a new treatment and getting this treatment into patients in a clinical trial. While not only identifying and testing new drugs from within the Centre itself, our other Research Centres will work with the Scottish Centre to test their discoveries, increasing the impact all the Centres have for brain tumour patients.

How will the Scottish Brain Tumour Research Centre of Excellence further our understanding of other types of brain tumour?

While primarily focused on GBM tumours, the learnings from the Scottish Centre will help further our understanding of other tumour types, as well as potentially identify new treatment options for these patients.


Low-grade gliomas for instance, can progress into higher grades, such as GBM,
over time – research from the Scottish Centre could provide valuable insights and options for these patients.


New targets, new drug compounds, new combinations and new delivery methods may be repurposed to treat other tumour types from high-grades to low-grades.