Asked by: Lord Framlingham (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the correlation between (1) the amount of finance available to, and (2) the time taken to find successful treatments and cures by, those undertaking research into diseases; and in particular, what assessment they have made of the impact of funding levels on the speed of finding treatments for brain tumours in young people.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health, including brain tumours in young people. As with other Government funders of health research, the NIHR does not allocate funding for specific disease areas. The level of research spend in a particular area, is driven by factors including scientific potential and the number and scale of successful funding applications.
The NIHR is working with the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission towards funding workshops for previously unsuccessful researchers to support them in submitting higher quality research applications. The NIHR only fund high quality research and all applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition.
Additionally, through the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission, we are working with research funding partners who fund research into new scientific discoveries, such as Cancer Research UK, the Medical Research Council and the brain tumour charities. We stand ready to translate these much-needed discoveries as quickly as possible into new treatments and diagnostics for patients via the NIHR. In May 2018 the Government announced £40 million over five years for brain tumour research as part of the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission through the NIHR.