Brain tumour scientist at Queen Mary’s Whitechapel lab lands £1.5m windfall to help find cure

Brain tumour professor Silvia Marino has been awarded £1.5 million to help her Queen Mary University research team find a cure.

She has gained international recognition with her pioneering research as the first woman president of the British Neuro-Oncology Society.

“This funding will allow us to move faster from the bench to the bedside,” she said.

“It means we can offer more experimental treatments to brain tumour patients.”

The grant will help Prof Marino and her scientists at the university’s Blizzard research institute in Whitechapel to develop a way to use their discoveries in clinical trials at the Royal London, speeding up the transition of scientific discoveries into patient care.

Brain tumours kill more people under the age of 40 than any other cancer, with fewer than one-in-five surviving beyond five years compared to half of all other cancers.

But just one per cent of the national budget for cancer research goes to brain tumours.

So the funding from Barts Charity has allowed research projects to get up and running and attract larger funders.