Chris’ new lab, The Mount Laboratory, uses advanced single-cell technologies to explore how cell-based cancer treatments interact with brain tumour cells and their surroundings.
The Future Leaders grant programme
Our Future Leaders grant programme was designed to give exceptional early career academic and clinical researchers the support they need to become the next generation of experts in neuro-oncology research.
Thanks to this funding, Dr Chris Mount has advanced from an early-career researcher to leading his own laboratory and research team — a major milestone that showcases both his talent and the tangible impact of this programme.
Chris’ Future Leaders project
Chris was awarded the Future Leaders postdoctoral fellowship in 2022. His research project focused on developing CAR-T cell therapy, where a patient’s own immune cells are “reprogrammed” to recognise and attack tumour cells, to treat gliomas.
This method is designed to help the immune system overcome the tumour’s natural defences, potentially leading to more effective and longer-lasting treatments.
Dr Chris Mount’s new lab and future research plans
Chris and his team are using cutting-edge technologies to study brain tumours at the level of individual cells. Their goal is to understand how new cancer treatments, like cell-based therapies, interact with the tumour and its surroundings. This knowledge could lead to better treatments for both children and adults with gliomas.
This approach, called cellular immunotherapy, involves taking a patient’s own immune cells and reprogramming them to attack cancer cells. Chris’ lab is working to overcome the challenges that have limited the effectiveness of these therapies so far. To study this, they are incorporating emerging technologies that allow study of the entire spectrum of genes expressed by tumour cells in tissue context – a process that they hope will enable unprecedented insights into the interactions between these therapies and the tumours they target.
As a clinical neuropathologist, Chris and his team work closely with doctors in neuro-oncology, neurosurgery, and others to make sure their research really helps patients. Driven by a ‘bedside to bench to bedside’ philosophy, they use real patient samples to create accurate models in the lab, test new treatments, and then engage with teams of clinical colleagues to translate these into clinical trials.
Developing innovative strategies to engage the immune system in fighting brain tumors has the potential for transformative impacts for patients with these devastating diseases. Ongoing support from the Future Leaders program has been essential to the progress of my team, and we will continue to strive to investigate and engineer better immunotherapies that bring our community closer to this goal."
Dr Chris Mount
The Future Leaders grant programme was launched in 2017, with the intention of providing the best and brightest researchers with the support and stability to reach their full potential in the field of brain tumours. To date, we have funded 14 researchers on this scheme, many of whom are now working towards opening their own labs and building their own research teams.
By funding bright minds at the very start of their research journey, our Future Leaders programme doesn’t just invest in projects – it invests in people. Dr Mount launching his own lab and research group shows exactly why this support matters: we’re not just backing experiments but nurturing the next generation of experts who will drive advances in the field of neuro-oncology research.
Dr Simon Newman, Chief Scientific Officer at The Brain Tumour Charity
At The Brain Tumour Charity, we are committed to funding excellent research that has the potential to make a real difference to people diagnosed with a brain tumour and their families. By supporting these Future Leaders, we’re helping to shape the future of research into brain tumours and improve outcomes for people diagnosed.