Brain Tumours

Question

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to improve the scale of research into the causes and treatment of brain tumours.

My Lords, I am hugely grateful to the noble Lord for bringing this challenge to my attention and pay tribute to the work that he does on the APPG. We are working closely with research partners. I am pleased to say that more research is being funded, as we continue to encourage more researchers to become involved in what remains a challenging scientific area with a relatively small research community. I am confident that the Government’s continued commitment to funding will help us make progress towards effective treatment.

My Lords, this is a devastating disease and I welcome the Government’s doubling of the £20 million grant for research to £40 million in memory of my late friend Baroness Jowell. Unfortunately, of that £40 million, I understand that only about £8.8 million has so far been allocated. Can the Minister assure me that that £40 million fund will be ring-fenced purely for brain tumour research? Secondly, will the National Institute for Health and Care Research give proper feedback to researchers who have had their projects rejected so that they can resubmit their applications with more hope of success?

I thank the noble Lord and pay my tribute to Tessa Jowell. I remember her final speech in the House. It is one of the most moving speeches I have ever heard; I recommend that noble Lords look it up on YouTube if they missed it first time round.

Brain cancer poses major scientific challenges, requiring investment in basic science through to applied and clinical research. Progress is hard won but we are committed to finding solutions. We want to fund high-quality research to benefit patients. In the four years since the 2018 announcement of £40 million of funding, there have been 13 studies funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research, with £10.7 million of funding, compared with just six studies in the preceding four years. We want to fund more, but this shows a positive trend.

The department of NIHR continues to work closely with the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission to grow capacity for brain cancer research. This means attracting new researchers, developing the community and supporting researchers to submit high-quality research funding proposals. As part of this, the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission will host a round-table event, with cross-party MPs participating to discuss the future of brain tumour research with leaders in the field. I extend an invitation to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, to attend this meeting, which will be held on 16 May.

My Lords, I have three interests here. One is that my mother is currently suffering from brain cancer in a hospice in Liverpool. Secondly, I was successfully operated on 35 years ago for a brain tumour. Thirdly, I am an officer of the APPG on Brain Tumours; I was honoured to sit on the inquiry that produced the report, Pathway to a Cure: Breaking Down the Barriers.

In the other place, the Minister, Will Quince, said:

“I understand and share the frustrations that only a proportion of the £40 million on brain tumour research has been allocated”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/3/23; col. 510.]

Can my noble friend confirm that bureaucracy will not get in the way of releasing funds for research, so that individuals and families who are suffering know that every effort is being made to find a cure for the deadly disease of brain cancer?

I pay tribute to my noble friend and wish his mother well. I was not aware of his fight with brain cancer 35 years ago. We are very lucky to have him in this place—long may it continue.

The NIHR generally does not allocate funding for specific disease areas or ring-fence. The level of research spend in a particular area is decided by factors including scientific potential and the number and scale of successful funding applications. In the four full years since the 2018 announcement of £40 million of funding, a commitment of £10.7 million has been spent on 13 studies, compared with six in the preceding four years. We want to fund more, but this represents a doubling of successful applications. The Government are committed to this but are reliant on good-quality projects being brought forward. I have spoken to my right honourable friend the Minister and more than £40 million will be allocated if the right projects come forward.

My Lords, do the Government have any plans for further proton beam therapy treatment centres, in addition to those in Manchester and at UCL, with consistent government and ethics research committee arrangements, so that the small research community can also benefit from cross-border working with the CUBRIC centre at Cardiff University, in which I declare an interest?

I thank the noble Baroness for her question; she shows her expertise in such matters. The UK departments for cancer research are jointly funding a network of 17 experimental cancer medical centres across the UK, plus a network for children which is dedicated to early-phase research into childhood cancers; we invested a total of £36 million between 2017 and 2022.

My Lords, can the Minister assure the House that the Government are committed to supporting research into brain tumours affecting children—in particular DIPG, which affects up to 40 children a year and for which, sadly, there is still no effective treatment?

The Government are committed to trying to solve the problem of childhood cancers. I am not aware of that specific case, but I can assure the noble Lord that, as I said in my previous answer, government research into childhood cancers will continue. However, there is still a lot of work to do; as the noble Lord well knows, this is a complicated and difficult subject to follow. There is a small medical community looking into this complicated disease, but the Government are doing all that they can.

My Lords, is my noble friend aware of the wonderful charities that are undertaking important research into brain tumours, including the Brain Tumour Charity and Brainstrust? Will he join me in thanking the thousands of runners in yesterday’s London marathon who raised such amazing amounts for charities such as these? I believe that my noble friend was one of those runners.

I thank my noble friend for that question. I was indeed running the London marathon yesterday and took note of all the wonderful cancer charities, including those that my noble friend mentioned, as they were running past me—which is an indication of how slowly I was going. They were going a lot quicker than I was. However, the serious point is that the London marathon is a wonderful British institution that raises millions of pounds for charity, and an awful lot of cancer charities benefit from it.

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister and others in this House on their efforts yesterday and pay tribute to the tireless work of the Tessa Jowell Foundation. It deserves our support for how it presses home the need for urgent improvements in treatment research and training to combat the rising devastation of brain cancer. However, while survival rates for glioblastoma are shockingly poor, and the numbers are described as an epidemic, this still is not enough for a business case to encourage companies to test new drugs. How will the Government encourage longer-term investment and action to develop new drugs, and will the Minister act to increase the numbers in clinical trials?

I thank the noble Baroness, who is right to point out that the number of people surviving brain cancer has not moved in recent years. I assure her that the Government are doing all that we can. The money is there. Working with the charitable organisations, we must attract more projects and investigations on this very complicated and difficult disease.

My Lords, I refer to my registered interests. Is the Minister content that there is sufficient investment in the basic infrastructure to deliver clinical research in the NHS to ensure that novel therapies to treat brain cancers can be evaluated in a timely and efficient fashion, especially within the context of the substantial challenges that the NHS is facing as it deals with clinical backlogs?

There is already a significant investment in people and facilities for cancer research. The research infrastructure supports brain tumour research studies, mainly in the NHS. This infrastructure is instrumental in the delivery of research funded by the NIHR, charities and others, so it is important in supporting and building the research community. However, resources are significant, and it is difficult to disaggregate brain tumour spending and add to the £10.7 million that we have already allocated.

My Lords, it is very impressive to see the Minister at the Dispatch Box after his efforts in the marathon.

All of us all in this House want to see progress in responding to this hard-to-treat cancer. However, the Minister’s answers on this topic are not that dissimilar to those that I would have had to give when I was responding back in 2019. Can he go back to the Question from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, go back to the department and challenge civil servants on whether they are giving the right feedback to researchers on how they can improve their research proposals so that we can start taking research forward and get the solutions for cancer patients who really deserve progress on that research?

I thank my noble friend, who is absolutely right to point this out. Perhaps we can discuss this further at the round table next month. Prior to these questions, I had a meeting and pressed the government department officials on this to ensure that the money is there. I am reassured that the money is indeed available if we get a sufficient number of projects that will have a significant impact on curing this terrible disease.