Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he is taking steps to include brain tumours in personalised mRNA-based cancer immunotherapies research.

Between 2018 and 2023, the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) has directly invested £11.3 million in research projects and programmes focused on brain tumours. This has enabled 227 brain cancer research studies to take place. Brain cancer remains one of the hardest to treat cancers, which is why in September, the NIHR announced new research funding opportunities for brain cancer research.

The Government is supporting the development of personalised mRNA-based cancer immunotherapies through our partnership with BioNTech, which aims to provide up to 10,000 United Kingdom based patients with mRNA-based immunotherapies by 2030. The NHS England Cancer Vaccine Launchpad has been established to accelerate the development of cancer vaccines. We are not able to comment at this stage on the pipeline of clinical trials that BioNTech will launch in the UK over the coming years.