Where Your Money Goes

Our ultimate aim is to find a cure and better treatments for brain tumours that affects so many children and families but we realise that until a cure or prevention is found, children and families also need support now.

• Family Support

We started off with just the research in 2010, but now a small proportion of our funds go directly towards funding UK holidays and providing financial support for families with terminal children or those with cancer.  These families are referred to us by the CLIC Sargent team based at The John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. 

Often children who suffer from serious or terminal illness have to endure long stays in hospital or unpleasant treatment and it’s difficult to make these brave children happy during this difficult time. We want to support as many of these children and families as we can and we do this in a number of ways.

The holidays we had with Taylan is something we treasure because it gave us precious family time away from the hospital, to have a change of scenery, but it also helped Taylan to have some form of normality and help him forget about what he was going through. We want others to have the same opportunity because there comes a time unfortunately, that time runs out and all you are left with is memories of the hospital and treatment plan. At a time of uncertainty, spending quality time with family can help restore a sense of normality, boost confidence and create precious memories for these families.

Being able to say to a family, who is having to make so many life changing and critical decisions - ‘just pack a few things and go, everything is sorted for you when you get there’ can mean the world to them.  We give those families a chance to take a deep breath whilst dealing with the circumstance they are in and we cannot tell you how rewarding that work is and we are really grateful to all of you for giving us the money to do that because it makes these families smile.  This can at times be the best medicine.

Not every family however may have the opportunity to go away due to treatment times or because of how quickly their cancer may have spread.  Instead they may wish to fulfil their child’s wishes at home such as decorate their room, purchase the latest gadget or simply require financial support to cope with the costs of hospital parking and travel.  We treat every case separately and assist with the needs for that individual.

It is because of our own unfortunate experience that we continue to do what we do but know that if we can fund research as much as possible and also lend a helping hand to those who need it at the moment, one day all of this injustice will stop.

• Research

Survival rates remain low for brain tumour patients and more worryingly, deaths are increasing.  

Brain Tumour Research, its member charities and umbrella groups, now support the UK's largest group of collaborating experts researching brain tumours in the UK at four world-class Universities.  They are University of Portsmouth, Queen Mary University of London in collaboration with UCL Institute of Neurology, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust (London) and Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry.

Collectively, our mission is to raise £7m a year to sustain seven research 'Centres of Hope' dedicated to laboratory-based brain tumour research.

These centres will collaborate with clinical centres across the region, as well as developing collaborations within the UK, throughout Europe and North America.

Brain Tumour Research and its umbrella groups aim to provide a regular input of substantial funds (£1 million per year per centre) to maintain the facilities. We will do so in order to secure the critical biological knowledge that will underpin the development of successful, innovative therapeutic approaches for all forms of brain tumours affecting any age group.

£1 million per year will pay for a team of researchers at each centre and their support staff. It will also pay for the materials that they need, such as tissue culture plastic ware, molecular and chemical reagents, serum and assay kits. Put simply, over 365 days in a year, that's £2,740 per day.

 The centre at the University of Portsmouth is now well established with an impressive team of researchers.

With the help of our many Member Charities, Umbrella Groups and supporters across the UK we have been able to provide much-needed funding to further our mission to build a ‘critical mass’ of research team expertise within the Cellular and Molecular Neuro-Oncology Group at the University of Portsmouth.

Professor Geoff Pilkington and his team of specialist researchers are working tirelessly to find new levels of understanding in one of the most complicated and challenging battle-grounds in medicine today: to achieve a full understanding of all types of brain tumour and the methods required to cure them. His team now includes: A Principal Research Fellow, Research Fellows, Senior Research Associates and PhD Students. Their team is strengthened with MSc and Erasmus students.

Geoff and his team are keenly aware of the work and effort put in by the Brain Tumour Research team and their UK-wide network of collaborations as well as their collective passion to find a cure for brain tumours. “Neuro-oncology research teams like ours remain reliant on charity funding to support our work,” he says. "While we are gaining fresh ground in better understanding the nature of tumours and a consequent path to resolving them, we need finance to establish more centres employing the talent for the basis of better outcomes in patients diagnosed with a brain tumour.”

"Brain tumour research urgently needs an injection of money to put the building blocks in place to provide regular income streams and career pathways. Both of these will ultimately lead to sustainable research and the answers that are so desperately needed.

During the course of a student's PhD we often see many promising and encouraging findings emerging. However, once the students finish their PhD the research abruptly ends, as no funding is available for them to continue. Each study may give us a glimmer of hope - then it is over. It is therefore imperative that we are given the opportunity to take these studies further.

Ultimately we need long term research programmes of dedicated brain tumour research. In the shorter term, we need to pump prime brain tumour research to guarantee that we keep intelligent, well trained, enthusiastic and motivated young scientists in the discipline, thus giving us the opportunity to build on what we already have achieved.

I am delighted that Brain Tumour Research has seized the initiative to launch a £1 million per year fundraising campaign to develop a brain tumour research ‘Centre of Excellence' here at the University of Portsmouth."

Professor Geoff Pilkington BSc PhD CBiol FSB FRCPath

Professor of Cellular and Molecular Neuro-oncology and Head of Cellular and Molecular Medicine Research Division

Institute of Biomedical and Biomolecular Sciences, University of Portsmouth

With the guarantee of a sustainable stream of funding, we will be able to continue supporting Professor Pilkington and his team, as well as the other research centres, to continue their vital research and take it to the next level. This should help to accelerate progress significantly in the UK's brain tumour research and make a clinical difference which will improve the outcomes for brain tumour patients.

To find out more about Professor Geoff Pilkington and the work he and his team are doing at the University of Portsmouth, please visit their website.

To find out more about the research papers published at the University of Portsmouth, please visit Brain Tumour Research

Further information regarding the Centres of Excellence can be found here

Lab Tours

If you would like to take a guided tour of the laboratories to see the amazing and valuable research that is taking place every day, as well as meet the team of scientists, please register your interest with Sarah at Brain Tumour Research or you can call her on 01908 862 200.  Lab Tours often coincide with a formal placement of plaques on the Wall of Hope which is a permanent recognition of the funds raised through the efforts of supporters. 

Lab Tours 2017

Lab Tours 2018