Brain Tumour Research Funding

Matthew Pennycook Excerpts

Thursday 9th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)]

It is a privilege to speak in the debate. We have heard some excellent speeches. I wish Margaret all the best, and I also wish the Hopkins family all the best, because I have seen the devastation that brain cancer causes. I also lost a close family friend, Matthew Fearn, and I have seen that devastation in the Fearn family. It is horrible, because this is a horrible progressive disease.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) and the all-party group on their excellent report, which I have only just heard about and have been reading during the debate.

Brain tumour research is receiving growing support from the Government, which is welcome news, but, as we have heard, more can and should be done. Brain tumours are the biggest cancer killer of people under 40 in the UK, but most people only discover that they have a brain tumour when they turn up at A&E, as Margaret did. That is why Brain Tumour Awareness Month is so important.

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

We have been talking about research funding specifically, but the hon. Lady is right: many sufferers will only find out that they have a brain tumour when they experience a significant medical event. For many others, however, the symptoms will be present for a number of weeks, if not months. Does she agree that more could be done to raise awareness, among both health professionals and those who are potentially at risk, of the common signs and symptoms of a tumour?

[Mrs Drummond]

Absolutely. I was going to come on to that. The bad news does not stop at a late diagnosis; the effects of being diagnosed too late are devastating. The bleak reality is that the likelihood of survival for 12 months for someone diagnosed with a brain tumour in A&E is about 30%. We must do better than this for the people who are diagnosed and for their families. All the cancer charities recognise the seriousness of the situation, and I know that the Health Secretary and his colleagues do as well, but how can we improve it? How can we identify the signs earlier?

When I spoke in the debate on brain tumour research in 2016, I praised the work of Professor Geoff Pilkington at the University of Portsmouth. In 2010, the university established a centre of excellence in conjunction with the charity Brain Tumour Research. Professor Pilkington has now retired, but the work that he did made much progress, and is now being continued in other research centres funded by the charity—although, sadly, I think no longer in Portsmouth.

Historically, brain cancer has received only about 1% of the total research funding of all cancers. As we have heard, that was increased with the announcement of a £65 million boost in 2018 from both the Department of Health and Social Care and Cancer Research UK. Centres of excellence need that money, because each brain tumour is unique and needs a different treatment pathway. The biggest gaps in research seem to involve childhood cancers, although brain tumours are the most common type of cancer in children. The understandable desperation of parents—and, as we have heard, of other patients too—has led to families’ seeking treatments, often overseas, that might not always be appropriate for this specific form of cancer, or even taking treatments that are unproven.

Inevitably, how the NHS treats brain tumours will be an area where there is much pressure on more funding. The history of healthcare in this country has always been one of improved diagnosis leading to more demand for clinical facilities, and research opening more treatment pathways. All of this costs money. In areas such as proton beam therapy, while it is good that we have The Christie centre in Manchester and that the UCLH centre is being added to it, it is difficult for patients to travel to those centres, particularly if they have been disabled by a brain tumour, and that is still an area where many people have to seek private treatment.

We need to develop both an academic and a medical pathway for people at the start of their careers to focus on brain tumour work in universities and clinical settings. As the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) said clearly in her amazing speech, we have some flagship research projects, but their existence is not as secure as that of establishments working on other cancers. One thing that could be done without costing huge amounts of money is support for early-career workers to build up institutional knowledge in the NHS, in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and in other guardians of healthcare, which would help to sustain a higher pace of research and development and deployment of treatments.

I end by thanking everyone for the work they are doing in this field. We are at a point where every small improvement in diagnosis and treatment makes a big difference to the lives of people with brain cancers and their families. That comes back the figure I quoted earlier about the time of diagnosis; we have to shift it much further forward from the A&E department, to give people support in dealing with a form of cancer that is so often extremely aggressive.