Background

Despite recent treatment advances ‘high-risk’ paediatric brain tumours (HR-PBTs) remain the leading cause of deaths from cancer in childhood. Advances in biological understanding, and their translation into effective therapies, will be essential to improve outcomes for these children, and coordinated national/international strategies will be required to achieve this. The INSTINCT programme brings together UCL Institute of Child Health, Newcastle University Northern Institute for Cancer Research and the Institute of Cancer Research, each of which already play international leading roles in paediatric brain tumour research.

What does INSTINCT aim to achieve?

INSTINCT specifically aims to bridge the gap between biological discovery and clinical practice through using state-of–the-art biological investigations to improve the outlook for children with HR-PBTs. BRAIN UK will support and facilitate the use of archival hospital brain tumour samples for molecular sequencing. Through co-ordinated research and clinical networks between our centres, our research will:

• Advance knowledge of brain tumour biology
• Ensure improved diagnosis
• Lead to future clinical trials
• Enable new effective treatments to be developed
• Increase the profile of brain tumour research to public, patient, academic and funding stakeholders
• Train researchers and clinicians of the future