Funded by the Little Princess Trust and administered by CCLG
Lead investigator: Professor Rylie Green, Imperial College London
Award: £49,987.97
Awarded July 2025
The challenge
Brain tumours are the most common solid tumours affecting children and young people. Treatment options include surgery, to remove as much of the tumour as possible, and a combination of radiotherapy and drugs to kill the remaining cancer cells. But brain surgery is not always possible, and it can result in serious complications or long-term damage to important brain functions. Most drugs also struggle to reach the brain due to its natural barrier, and tumours frequently grow back after treatment.
The project
To address this challenge, Professor Rylie Green has assembled a multidisciplinary team of engineers, doctors, and brain cancer specialists. They have developed a small implant that could be placed inside brain tumours to release cancer drugs only where they are needed. This could reduce side effects by removing the need for chemotherapy drugs that spread throughout the body, and also stopping them from reaching areas of healthy brain. It could also provide an alternative to surgery for hard-to-reach tumours. By reducing or eliminating the need for major brain surgery, this technology could lead to new therapies that provide fewer risks, faster recovery, and improved quality of life.
This project, based at Imperial College London, will focus on fabricating and testing this new implant in the lab with brain tumour models. It will consist of 3 main stages:
- Ensuring the implant releases the right amount of drug each time.
- Studying how drugs are released and how to control their movement through brain tissue.
- Testing drug release into brain tumours in model organisms.
The impact
If successful, this research will show the potential of a new mode of treatment and highlight potential advantages and limitations. This will be key to securing more funding to continue development. Because of this, this project could represent the first step toward kinder and more effective treatments that could help young people with brain cancer live longer and healthier lives.
The Little Princess Trust
This project was funded by The Little Princess Trust. They fund research projects in partnership with CCLG, combining CCLG's research funding and grant management expertise with The Little Princess Trust's fantastic fundraising to support world-class scientific research.