Brain cancer clinical trial aims to 'bring hope'

A £6.9m clinical trial programme that aims to improve brain cancer treatment for patients in Yorkshire has been launched by a charity.

The project, funded by Yorkshire Cancer Research, involves changing the way drug effectiveness is tested in people with recurrent glioblastoma - the most common and fastest-growing type of brain cancer.

Each year, about 247 people in Yorkshire are diagnosed with glioblastoma and about 181 people die, the charity said.

Emma Ward, who was diagnosed with a fast-growing tumour in 2025, said the trials would "bring hope right here to our region", where survival rates are lower than the national average.

The 47-year-old from York said: "For families like mine facing brain cancer, time means everything."

She said the research programme, called EPIC-GB, was the "only way to give families more time to make memories together".

The trials, which aim to enable patients to access trial treatments earlier, will be delivered in Sheffield, Leeds and Hull.

Many existing cancer drugs are ineffective at treating glioblastoma due to the protective layer around the brain preventing access to tumours, the charity said.

The clinical trials will see participants start new treatments before having surgery, meaning tumour tissue removed in operations can be studied to show which drugs have been successful.

This means ineffective drugs can be dropped sooner, avoiding unnecessary side effects and switching to better options faster.

Yorkshire Cancer Research said there had not been any "significant" breakthroughs in treating glioblastoma in nearly 20 years.

Ward, who raised £145,000 to access immunotherapy abroad last year, said: "Too many people lose their lives because there are so few options for treating brain cancers.

"It feels as though brain cancers have been placed in the 'too hard' box, so investment in research is held back out of fear nothing will work."

She added: "When the time comes, I don't want my daughters and husband to think of me in hospital or going through treatment.

"I want them to remember the trips we took, dancing in the kitchen, the laughter and all those happy times we shared as a family.

"Only through more research can we give families more of those memories."

The charity said reasons for Yorkshire's lower survival rate included the size of the region and higher levels of deprivation in some areas.

Ola Rominiyi, clinical lecturer in neurosurgery at the University of Sheffield and neurosurgical resident at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, said current treatments were "not good enough" to resist the "aggressive" disease.

"We're optimistic this new study is a vital step forward, ensuring more people can access promising new treatments and giving hope where options have too often been limited," he said.

Dr Stuart Griffiths, director of research, policy and impact at Yorkshire Cancer Research said he hoped the programme would "help position Yorkshire as an attractive region for future investment in clinical trials".

"This ground-breaking study shows the charity's commitment to bringing innovative clinical trials to Yorkshire, so people in the region can be among the first to benefit from pioneering cancer breakthroughs," he said.

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