A healthy body usually only creates new cells to replace old or damaged ones. In cancer, cells grow out of order where they are not needed, and create a tumour. The causes of most brain tumours are still unknown, but some are known to begin in specialised “housekeeping” cells that normally support surrounding nerve cells and clean up their waste. Early symptoms range from persistent headaches and nausea to personality changes, and doctors usually diagnose brain tumours by doing an MRI scan followed by a biopsy.
How does it start?
Brain tumours are the second most common group of cancers in children, accounting for more than a quarter (26 per cent) of all cancers in children (aged 0-14); nevertheless, they are still very rare. But it's not just children who are affected. The risk of developing a brain tumour – like many other cancers – increases with age, with the risk rising sharply in the over-fifties and peaking in later life.
Who’s affected?
Survival for patients with brain tumours remains lower than other common cancers. Cancer Research UK is boosting its investment into brain tumours, leading to a better understanding of the disease. The charity will spend around an extra £25 million over the next five years on ring-fenced, targeted initiatives, and is aiming to expand its research portfolio in all types of brain tumours, whether in children or adults.
What is Cancer Research UK doing about it?
Key breakthroughs:
Charting recent progress
2018
Two new brain tumour research centres are planned
2014
Brain tumours become a top priority
Therapeutics Unit at the ICR. “By creating a hub of expertise for children’s brain tumour research in the UK, we aim to make real inroads to tackling these diseases,” says Professor Gilbertson. “Gathering this expertise together means we can shine a light on the numerous challenges and difficulties that brain tumours pose and discover new treatments to ensure that more children survive their disease.”
The second Brain Tumour Centre of Excellence will bring together researchers from the University of Edinburgh and University College London, led by Professors Margaret Frame and Tariq Enver respectively. The new centre aims to tackle brain tumours in both children and adults.
Cancer Research UK has established two new Brain Tumour Centres of Excellence to build resources and capacity to tackle this hard-to-treat cancer.
The Cancer Research UK for Children & Young People Children's Brain Tumour Centre of Excellence, supported by TK Maxx, will create a hub of expertise in this area. Led by Professor Richard Gilbertson at the University of Cambridge and Professor Paul Workman at the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London, the centre is uniting teams across the research network at both locations, and aims to drive progress in children’s brain tumour research. It has a particular focus on drug discovery for brain tumours in children, drawing on the strengths of the Cancer Research UK Cancer
Brain tumours represent one of the hardest types of cancer to treat because not enough is known about what starts and drives the disease, and current treatments are not effective enough. This means progress in treating brain tumours has remained frustratingly slow. Cancer Research UK’s head of research careers Dr Karen Noble says that an added complication is the diversity of brain tumours: “There are more than 100 different types of brain tumour, with some subtypes being very rare. When fewer people are affected by a particular type of cancer, it can make gathering data and performing clinical trials harder for researchers,” she says. What’s more, she explains, patients often only see a doctor or are diagnosed when they are already very ill, or are
ineligible for surgery: “In these instances, scientists will be unable to collect samples of their tissue, which means it isn’t available to study.”
Demonstrating its commitment to increase funding for brain tumour research, Cancer Research UK agreed the best way forward was to invest in Brain Tumour Awards, through which a dedicated £15 million of funding has been granted to research teams focused on this field (the total came to £18 million, thanks to a partnership with the Brain Tumour Charity).
The first funding was awarded to three teams in 2019, and research is underway. All draw on global expertise. “Each award is worth up to £6 million over five years, which far exceeds current funding,” says Dr Noble. “The awards have attracted dynamic, international, interdisciplinary teams, and the idea is that this initiative will act as a springboard for future research and collaboration.”
My brain tumour story
When Sue found out she had a benign brain tumour, it came as a complete surprise. It wasn’t long before she began to appreciate the difference between a ‘treatment plan’ and a ‘cure’
Sue Humphreys, 48, a mother of three from Aldridge in the West Midlands, was diagnosed with a brain tumour completely unexpectedly in 2007.
Sue had suffered with migraines for many years but as they were getting progressively worse, she began to seek a better way of treating them.
“I heard about a new technique that might relieve my migraine symptoms, but before receiving treatment I needed a routine MRI scan,” she says.
Sue saw a neuroanaesthetist who conducted the scan on her brain and returned to the clinic a week later for the results with the hope of being able to schedule in the treatment.
“This was when my life changed,” she continues. “The results showed what was described initially as an inoperable mass. At the time my children were seven, four and 22 months old, and my first thought was for them, and my husband Craig.
The news hit her and her family hard, particularly as “the initial diagnosis came out of the blue”, says Sue. She was immediately referred to a specialist, “who I was lucky enough to see the
‘My brain tumour means I have to take each day as it comes’
Donate today to help Cancer Research UK make more incredible strides forward in diagnosis, prevention and treatment of cancer. No matter how small or large, your gift will lead to dramatic changes to cancer outcomes in your lifetime. For example:
£40 could pay for a cancer biopsy, where a tiny sample of someone’s tumour is taken for research
£250 could buy 500 plastic dishes, essential for scientists to grow and study cells in the lab
£1,000 could help fund a clinical trial of a new, more effective treatment for brain tumours
Join Cancer Research UK on its mission towards the day when all cancers are cured.
Advertiser content for
Advertisement feature for
THE FUTURE:
23%
of new cases of brain,
other CNS and intracranial tumours in the UK are in people aged 75
and over
Targeting tumours’ ‘sleeper cells’
Some tumour cells have what is called a sleep-wake cycle, which means they can grow back when they “reactivate”. Professor Steven Pollard is leading an international team of researchers at the University of Edinburgh, looking at cancer cells that evade treatment in a “sleeping” state called dormancy. Professor Pollard’s team will study the way these cells can switch from dormant to awake with the aim of finding clinical interventions that could stop the tumour growing again. These therapies could either force the tumour cells to permanently stay asleep or, alternatively, force them out of their slumber so treatment eliminates them.
‘Russian doll’ nano-chemotherapy
Professor Neil Carragher is leading a research team drawn from the Universities of Edinburgh and Oxford and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose work uses nano-particles so tiny they can cross the blood-brain barrier, which separates the blood from the fluid that bathes the brain and keeps a tight check on anything trying to get into the brain, including certain drugs.
The “Russian doll” technology is so called because the particles pack several drugs into their different layers (like nesting dolls). Using multiple drug therapies at once is necessary because cancer cells in glioblastoma (the most aggressive type of brain tumour) evolve so quickly that they can rapidly become resistant to certain chemotherapies.
Unpicking the biology of children’s brain tumours
© 2019 Telegraph Media Group Limited
Terms and conditions | Privacy Policy
Saving lives in our lifetime: Tackling brain tumours
There are more than 130 types of brain tumour, meaning new trials and treatments have proven challenging for the medical research community. This long read examines how Cancer Research UK hopes outcomes could soon be much more promising by bringing together the top specialists around the world and renewing focus on this type of cancer
JUMP TO
Timeline
Case Study
Symptoms
Prevention
Brain, other central nervous system (CNS) and within-the-skull (intracranial) tumours are the ninth most common cancer in the UK, with around 11,700 new cases a year. The rest of this article will use “brain tumours” to refer to brain, other CNS and intracranial tumours.
What is it?
Produced by Telegraph Spark
Words Zoe McDonald Commissioning Editor Jess Spiring
Sub-Editor Loveday Cuming Designer Sandra Hiralal
Digital Developer Pedro Hernandez Picture Editor Emma Copestake
Web Producer Katherine Scott Project Manager Alex Brooksbank
Some types of children’s brain tumours develop because cells which should have disappeared during development in the womb don’t go. Instead, these cells stick around and end up in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Professor Richard Gilbertson from the University of Cambridge, and his collaborators in the US and Canada, aim to better understand this process and how brain tumours develop in children. They will use what we already know about embryonic brain development to try to discover new drug targets for these tumours. And to learn more, they’re working to build maps of developing human and mice brains to identify which parts of the embryonic brain turn into which type of brain tumour.
The team will also explore the way children’s brain tumours behave, so that they may be able to target some of their unique features with drugs and bring about improvements in survival and a reduction in long-term, treatment-related side effects.
Could a breath test detect cancer in the future?
What does the future of cancer research look like?
Scientists say ‘thank you’ to cancer trial participants
Related content
How Cancer Research UK plans to continue tackling lung cancer in the next 25 years
How Cancer Research UK plans to continue tackling brain tumours
meninges
Most benign tumors
are found in the
following day. After the initial introduction at this meeting, he looked at the scan images and told me that he would have a ‘treatment plan’ for me.
“When we discussed this further, I wanted to know if that would mean a ‘cure’ – as I am sure everyone would want to know – and I was told that there is no cure and it is all about management, not cure. Clearly this was a step in the right direction, but it is a serious psychological hurdle to overcome.
“While some diseases affect certain parts of the body, when there is something in the brain, it affects every part of your existence. The brain is the control centre of the body and is pretty much the only part of the body that can't be replaced. Some injuries to the brain can have a massive and sometimes silent impact on your life as they can change your health, your feelings, your thoughts, your mobility, your control and almost always your personality.
“I had surgery to remove the tumour, which I was told afterwards was a grade 2 ‘benign’ tumour. I was told that despite the benign label, such tumours can become malignant. Thankfully, my brilliant surgeon managed to take it all out and I had six really good symptom-free years. Then in April 2013 we were on holiday in the Canaries when I had a violent seizure in my sleep, which was a bolt out of the blue. I started taking anti-seizure medication which worked for a while, but in November 2013 I had another seizure.
“I was rediagnosed in 2014, when I was told my tumour was grade 3 anaplastic astrocytoma. Although I had been on a watch-and-wait cycle of monitoring, with scans every three to six months, it was only picked up after my hospital switched to a more detailed MRI spectroscopy scan. The words back in 2007 came back to remind me that this is the treatment plan and not the cure. Following on from the surgery, I then endured 18 gruelling cycles of chemotherapy, putting more drugs in my body every day to try to stabilise the development of the tumour.
“The outlook is unknown and uncertain. The way it is described to me by both my neurosurgeon and oncologist is that the type I have will just simmer away and that it is always going to be there and will definitely return at some point in the future.
“With many other cancers if you get to a certain point you can be told it is in remission, but for this, it is just waiting to see when it decides to come back again and how aggressive it will be next time. And that is how I have to live my life: get up and take each day as it comes.
“In spite of this uncertainty, I feel really good now, and it’s great to see my children planning their futures. My daughter is going into her second year studying biomedical science at university. She has been inspired to go into cancer research after what happened to me. I’m so proud of my kids and cherish all the time I have with them.”
Brain tumours: know the symptoms
[Professor Richard Gilbertson]
Brain tumours can cause many different symptoms; some are caused by the space they take up as they grow, others because of their specific position in the brain. Many of the symptoms of a brain tumour are very general, and it is more likely that something much less serious than cancer is causing them. If you have any of these symptoms or anything else that is not normal for you, it’s important to see your doctor.
The most common symptoms of brain tumours include:
Headaches
Headaches are a very common symptom of illness. It's unlikely you have a brain tumour if headaches are your only symptom. But see a doctor if you have headaches:
. with feeling or being sick
. when you didn't have them before
. that wake you up at night
. with eye problems such as seeing flashing lights or blind spots
Seizures (fits)
Feeling or being sick
You might feel or be sick, especially when you move suddenly. It’s rare for people with a brain tumour to have sickness on its own. You may have sickness with headaches, weakness and problems with your eyes.
Drowsiness or loss of consciousness
You might feel drowsy or even lose consciousness. This can happen because as the tumour grows, it increases the pressure inside the skull and this can lower the blood supply to the brain. This can be frightening for you and the people around you.
Problems with your eyes
You might find that your eyesight is getting worse and glasses are not helping. Or your vision comes and goes. You might have:
Personality and behaviour changes
You, or the people around you, might notice that you are confused or that your personality has changed. You may also find it difficult to think normally.
Seizures are a common symptom of brain tumours. You might have some jerking or twitching of your hands, arms or legs. Or it might affect your whole body. Having a seizure is very frightening. Different illnesses can cause them and it is important that you see your doctor immediately if you have one.
. blurred vision
· floating shapes
· tunnel vision
‘My brain tumour means I have to take each day as it comes’
Brain cancer: know the symptoms
Cerebrum (forebrain)
Brain stem
Cerebellum
3%
of all cancer cases in the UK are brain, other CNS and intracranial tumours
£25 million
is being spent over the next five years on brain tumour-targeted initiatives
23%
of new cases of brain,
other CNS and intracranial tumours in the UK are in people aged 75
and over