A leading Fife-based cancer charity is helping fund innovative research into brain tumours.
Worldwide Cancer Research, based in St Andrews, has joined forces with the Brain Tumour Charity to commit £340,000 to advance the work of two outstanding scientists.
A grant of £119,000 has been awarded to Dr Lee Wong at Monash University in Australia to search for weaknesses in brain tumours so new treatments can be developed.
Dr Wong and her team have worked out that a tiny alteration to chromosome structure can be used to identify tumour cells from normal cells and now want to investigate exactly how these changes drive tumour growth in glioma, a type of brain tumour.
A further £218,000 has been awarded to Professor Adrian Bracken at Trinity College, Dublin, to study a rare but highly aggressive childhood brain cancer, DIPG (Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma).
Dr Helen Rippon, chief executive of Worldwide Cancer Research, said: “This is the first time both charities have joined forces to help fund cancer research and the combined support means that research projects are able to be completed that might otherwise have been missed.
“I would like to give sincere thanks to The Brain Tumour Charity and to our generous supporters – without this dedication and support, the pioneering projects we fund simply would not happen.”
