To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what funding his Department has provided for child brain tumour research in each year since 2015.
Answered on
9 January 2025
The Department invests £1.5 billion per year in health research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), and NIHR research expenditure for all cancers was £121.8 million in 2022/23. Cancer is a major area of NIHR spend, reflecting its high priority.
For research specifically on child brain tumours, the NIHR has made three direct awards since 2015 with a total value of approximately £650,000. The following table shows the NIHR’s committed spend on research into child brain tumours in each year since 2015/16, and the total award budget:
Financial year | Total |
2015/16 | £0 |
2016/17 | £0 |
2017/18 | £54,305 |
2018/19 | £59,110 |
2019/20 | £64,058 |
2020/21 | £57,691 |
2021/22 | £0 |
2022/23 | £48,801 |
2023/24 | £179,149 |
Total award budget | £649,614 |
Between 2018/19 and 2022/23, the NIHR directly invested £11.3 million in research projects and programmes focused on brain tumors across 15 awards. Additionally, wider NIHR investment in research infrastructure, supporting the facilities, services, and the research workforce, supported the delivery of 227 brain cancer research studies over this period, enabling an estimated 8,500 people to participate in research at estimated cost of £31.5 million. This NIHR infrastructure-supported research included a significant number of studies involving children and young people, including those delivered by NIHR Great Ormond Street Biomedical Research Centre.
In September 2024, the NIHR announced new research funding opportunities for brain cancer research, spanning both adult and paediatric populations. This includes a national NIHR Brain Tumour Research Consortium, to ensure the most promising research opportunities are made available to adult and child patients, and a new funding call to generate high quality evidence in brain tumour care, support, and rehabilitation. Further information on these opportunities is available at the following link:
https://www.nihr.ac.uk/news/new-funding-opportunities-novel-brain-tumour-research-launched
The NIHR continues to encourage and welcome applications for research into any aspect of human health, including childhood cancer. Applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards made on the basis of the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money, and scientific quality.