Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that the National Institute for Health and Care Research, the Medical Research Council, and the UK Research and Innovation work together collaboratively to ensure progress on funding brain tumour research.

Research is crucial in tackling cancer, which is why the Department invests over £1 billion per year in health research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). NIHR research expenditure for all cancers was £121.8 million in 2022/23, and the NIHR spends more on cancer than any other disease group.

In May 2018 the Government announced £40 million for brain tumour research as part of the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission, through the NIHR. Since this announcement, the NIHR has committed £11.3 million across 17 projects, with the Medical Research Council (MRC) awarding £10.4 million. There is still funding available from the original £40 million, and we expect to spend more as new research progresses.

The Department is taking steps to ensure that funders work closely together to coordinate work along the translational pathway, from the discovery and early translational science typically supported by the MRC, feeding through to the applied health and care research funded by the NIHR. These steps include convening a brain cancer research roundtable in May 2024, to bring together research experts and funders, to determine how to accelerate research efforts in this area.

As an example of coordination, the Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME) Programme is a partnership between the MRC and the NIHR, supporting research in the mechanisms of diseases, and treatments which have the potential to make a step-change in the promotion of health, treatment of disease, and improvement of rehabilitation or long-term care. The EME’s portfolio includes a £1.5 million clinical trial testing the effectiveness of a targeted form of proton beam radiotherapy for a type of brain cancer called oligodendroglioma. The NIHR also coordinates with the MRC to complement their investments, such as a £2 million investment supporting researchers to understand and treat cancers with exceptionally poor survival rates, including cancer of the brain, lung, and oesophagus.