Dr Tracy Warr,
Brain Tumour UK Reader in Neuro-Oncology

Dr Tracy Warr is a specialist in childhood primary tumour research. Together with Professor John Darling she leads the Brain Tumour UK Neuro-Oncology labs at the University of Wolverhampton.

“In childhood tumours, we still don’t understand what’s going wrong with the genes and the biology at a basic level to make these tumours grow. Too little research has been done on those tumours so far.
But we’re not on a fishing trip now. We have narrowed down many of the disruptive genes and are starting to understand them.

With cancerous adult tumours we are much further down the road and testing chemotherapies and resistance. We are thinking about altering tumours, to make them more vulnerable to chemotherapy.

For example, we are testing several slightly different versions of one chemotherapy to see which one stops the growth of malignant meningiomas. When cells divide, part of the process involves a kind of skeleton made from micro-tubules. These are recycled into a spindle that changes the shape of the cell from flat to round, just before it divides.

If we can interrupt that process with this chemotherapy, it could be used to stop this type of tumour growing. It’s painstaking work. Meningioma cells are very difficult to grow in the lab, so this is a major challenge.”

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