Rob Marris
Main Page: Rob Marris (Labour - Wolverhampton South West)Department Debates - View all Rob Marris's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)
Last Friday, I had the very great privilege of spending quite a long time with Peter Realf, who is here today with his family, at the University of Wolverhampton’s brain tumour research centre in my constituency. We discussed a range of things related to brain tumours with Professor John Darling and Professor Tracy Warr, who gave evidence to the Petitions Committee.
I want to make a couple of brief points to remind the Minister that money spent on generic cancer research—important though that research is—is often not applicable to brain tumour research. One cannot say that 3% of cancers are brain tumours and therefore 3% of the generic cancer research funding can be attributed to brain tumour research. There are about 120 different types of brain tumours. As Professor Warr herself pointed out to the Committee, that generic research is not applicable to many of the brain tumour situations. I repeat what she said to the Committee—it is quoted in paragraph 53 of the report:
“It is a very complex disease and a lot of the general non-site specific translational work from other tumours cannot be applied to brain tumours”.
Also, on the same page of the report, in paragraph 55 —this has been mentioned earlier in the debate but it bears repeating—the actual amount, as far as one can tell, that is spent on brain tumour research in the United Kingdom at the moment appears to be in the order of £2.2 million.
I asked Professors John Darling and Tracy Warr how big the brain tumour research community—for want of a better word—is in the UK and they said that it is in the order of 100 people—very specialist people. I asked them what the chances are of scaling up if, as we hope, we get a considerable increase in research funding from the Government as a result of pressure from both sides of the House. It is all very well the Government saying they are going to increase funding for brain tumour research—as I hope they will—but if the researchers are not there to do it, we cannot scale up in a short time; it is very complex work.
The professors told me and Peter Realf that we could scale up if, for example, the funding were doubled. Some have suggested that it should go up by £35 million, but if it is £2.2 million now and that were to double, we could scale up. The brain tumour research centre at the University of Wolverhampton—a national centre of excellence that does this work—is losing doctoral and post-doctoral students to other fields, such as that related to leukaemia, or to places such as Chicago, because the positions are not there for them in the UK. I ask the Minister to please consider this: we can scale up, we do have the skills there and we can double the research funding. It will cost about £2 million to £2.5 million a year to double the research funding—please do that.