Our Future Leaders programme was developed to support excellent academic and clinical researchers who are just beginning their careers, so they can establish themselves as leading experts in neuro-oncology research.
This award was designed to provide the right researcher with up to £1.8 million in funding over 12 years and give them the support needed to set up their own lab. After three years, the postdoctoral fellows awarded the first stage of the Future Leaders grant are invited to apply for a four-year Junior Fellowship to support themselves and a research associate in a host laboratory.
Our two new Junior Fellows are Dr Ola Rominiyi and Dr Christopher Mount, who have been awarded a further £600,000 each over four years to support their research!
Blocking DNA Repair in Gliomas to Overcome Resistance
During his Future Leaders project, Dr Ola Rominiyi focused on DNA repair in glioblastoma and found that different parts of the same tumour repair their DNA in very different ways before receiving treatment.
In his Junior Fellowship, Ola will continue this work, addressing treatment resistance challenges by studying rare tissue samples. These samples will come from patients who have received experimental treatments before surgery as part of clinical trials.
Dr Ola Rominiyi
Dr Rominiyi is a Lecturer in Neurosurgery and a Specialty Registrar in Neurosurgery at the University of Sheffield. He has already made significant contributions to neuro-oncology research by creating a large biobank containing multiple samples that are used by researchers and industry in the UK.
Targeting Treatment Resistance in Gliomas to Rapidly Push CAR-T Cell Therapies to Clinic
Dr Christopher Mount’s previous work, he discovered that glioblastoma cells respond in predictable ways to different CAR-T cell treatments. This insight revealed new targets that could make CAR-T therapy more effective for brain tumours.
In his Junior Fellowship, Chris will be building on these discoveries to engineer CAR-T cells tailored for glioblastoma and IDH-mutant high-grade gliomas.
Dr Christopher Mount
Dr Christopher Mount studied at Stanford University and during his PhD he discovered a new target for immune therapy that could help fight an extremely aggressive type of brain tumour. He even led a clinical trial with children to test this therapy and saw promising results.
Now, Dr Mount is continuing his research in his new lab, at Massachusetts General Hospital. The Mount Laboratory uses advanced single-cell technologies to explore how cell-based cancer treatments interact with brain tumour cells and their surroundings.
Our Junior Fellowship grants are developing the next generation of leaders in scientific and clinical neuro-oncology research, with the aim of accelerating progress towards a cure. We are delighted to continue funding Chris and Ola as they enter the second stage of the Future Leaders programme, and we look forward to following their progress over the next four years as they establish their own research teams and continue to shape the future of the field.
Dr Simon Newman
Chief Scientific Officer at The Brain Tumour Charity