Two new researchers join Brain Tumour UK labs

Two new PhD researchers have joined Brain Tumour UK’s Neuro-Oncology Research Centre at the University of Wolverhampton, to explore the behaviour of astrocytomas in children and low grade gliomas in adults.

Hoda Kardooni MSc joins our team from the genetics labs at Royal Hallam Hospital in Sheffield, while Anushree Singh MSc has a Distinction from her work at Leeds. The two competed against many other students for these important three-year research positions.

“I chose to work in this field because I knew that too little research had been done on brain tumours,” says Hoda. “I’m working for the benefit for patients and that’s always in my mind. Previous work on gene expression in Brain Tumour UK’s labs has found significant differences between normal genes and brain tumour genes. I hope to find out if we can exploit those differences to improve life for children affected by astrocytomas.”

Anushree is focusing on low grade gliomas in adults. “We know that brain tumours are really difficult to treat and that makes it even more challenging to do research in this field,” she explains.

“My main aim is to make some new findings in the short term and then build upon that. There is a large number of people affected by these tumours all over the world, but compared to other types of cancer this research is still new.

Dr Tracy Warr, Brain Tumour UK’s Reader in Neuro-Oncology at the Centre, will be supervising the research. “Childhood high grade astrocytomas are generally different from adult astrocytomas, missing the particular genes such as P53 and EGFR that we use to classify adult tumours. But we have also found that one group of these tumours in children has a genetic signature that’s similar to that in adults. At this stage, we don’t know what’s causing these tumours but we have some informed ideas and we’ll be taking a broad approach to understanding the pathways that these tumours follow.

“Our work on low grade gliomas in adults aims to tackle a very serious problem. Low grade gliomas will usually, at some point, progress to a high grade state. The trouble is, we don’t know when this might happen. If you don’t know what a tumour will do, or when, it’s very hard to make decisions about the best course of treatment at a particular moment in time.

“If we can find the differences between those tumours which will change quickly and those which will change slowly, doctors and patients will be able to make informed decisions about treatment, such as whether to operate now, which of course has its own risks, or take a ‘watch-and-wait’ approach.”

• These research posts are funded by the University of Wolverhampton.