Brain Tumour North West (BTNW), involves the Universities of Central Lancashire, Hull, Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan and Wolverhampton, and together with the Lancashire Teaching Hospitals, Clatterbridge Centre for Oncology and Walton Centre NHS Trusts, in a new strategic alliance designed to consolidate and exploit clinical and research-based brain tumour expertise which currently exists within the region.
BTNW brings academic staff, consultant neurosurgeons, neuropathologists and oncologists together with specialist nurses, biomedical scientists and other allied healthcare professionals to form a powerful critical mass dedicated to brain tumour research.
In this way, the North West will form the focus for the development and delivery of significant research programmes designed to increase our understanding of this devastating form of cancer. Ultimately, this will result in improved and faster methods of accurate diagnosis with effective treatment customised to the individual patient.
The figure above shows the results of some current work by BTNW. Cells from patients with brain cancer are cultured in vitro to test for their sensitivity to a variety of anticancer drugs. The vertical axis gives the concentration of the drugs at which 50% of the cells are killed (LD50). A marked individual difference of sensitivity to the different anti-cancer drugs is apparent. It is hoped that this form of research will supply valuable information to the clinicians as to which drug would be the most suitable for administration to a particular patient.
Our Mission
Brain Tumour North West (BTNW) is presently based around the clinical neuro-oncology teams and scientists at local universities and NHS trusts across the northwest of England and Yorkshire. It presently comprises Preston, Manchester, Liverpool, Wolverhampton, Lancaster, Hull and Leeds to stimulate and support neuro-oncology research and the introduction of innovative therapies for these tumours in the region. With nearly a quarter of the population of England and five of the eight largest English cities, it is already stimulating new laboratory research programmes and the development of innovative clinical trials of new treatments for these uncommon but difficult-to-treat tumours. BTNW is already in contact with several pharmaceutical and medical instrument companies in Europe and the USA and working to involve brain tumour patients in the region in new clinical trials. BTNW has brought together regional brain tumour tissue banks in Manchester, Liverpool, and Preston by adopting a streamlined pathway to accessing consented blood and brain tumour samples and access to clinical information via a unified application process that allows access to such material from across the region through a single application. This is already leading to the development of research proposals across the regions with enough cases to command the respect of the peer-review system.