Funded by the Little Princess Trust and administered by CCLG
Lead investigator: Dr Timothy Ritzmann, University of Nottingham
Award: £129,375.53
Awarded March 2026
The challenge
Ependymoma is a hard-to-treat type of childhood brain tumour. Even after surgery and radiotherapy, about half of patients experience a return of the cancer (relapse). One reason for this high rate of relapse may be that cancer cells can hide in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) – the fluid that surrounds the brain and spinal cord – waiting to grow back later. With current treatments, only one in four children survive for five years or more after a relapse, showing the importance of developing new treatment approaches.
Researchers think that aquaporins (AQPs), a group of proteins that regulate water movement in the body, may affect how tumours grow and spread. Aquaporin 1 (AQP1) and Aquaporin 4 (AQP4) have been found in higher amounts in ependymoma. This increase may help tumour cells invade surrounding tissue and spread through the CSF. If there was a way to target these proteins, it could lead to a more effective treatment that could save more young lives.
The project
Dr Timothy Ritzmann’s project at the University of Nottingham aims to find out how AQPs might contribute to the growth and spread of ependymoma. His team will study ependymoma tumour samples collected from children on an existing clinical trial, examining how AQPs behave and whether higher levels of AQPs are linked to worse outcomes.
They will use cutting-edge spatial technologies to achieve three main goals:
- Find out where AQPs are inside ependymoma tumours.
- Show whether AQP levels at the time of diagnosis are linked to relapse or poor survival.
- Discover whether AQPs can be detected in blood or CSF samples, which could provide an early warning sign that ependymoma is growing back.
The impact
By improving understanding of how ependymomas develop and return, Dr Ritzmann and his expert team hope to identify new treatment targets that are both more effective and less harmful for children. Their findings could pave the way for better monitoring, earlier detection of relapse, and the development of new and more effective treatments.