Donor consents to brain tissue donation for medical research during operation in Leeds

A donor has consented to donate their brain tumour tissue whilst undergoing brain surgery today.

The Leeds Tissue Bank is a collaboration between Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust which will collect the tissue samples, and the University of Leeds, which will process, store

and distribute the samples for use in medical research.

The donation to the Tissue Bank will enable improved collaboration locally and nationally, providing state-of-the-art resources to collect, examine and conserve fresh tissue samples to find treatments and ultimately aim to find a cure for brain cancer.

Every week 15 adults and children are diagnosed with a brain tumour in our region. They are the biggest cancer killer of people aged under 40, with prognosis for patients improving little

in over 40 years.

Susan Mountain’s daughter, Maci, was diagnosed with DIPG, a childhood brain tumour in August 2017 and died in October that year, at just 13 years old. Since that time, Susan and

her loved ones have fundraised tirelessly in Maci’s memory, helping to raise funds to support families, research and the new tissue bank.

She said: “There is no cure for DIPG brain tumours in children and very little funding into research. Could you imagine hearing that if this was your child? We had so many questions

and little hope, we want to change that so no family has to go through what we did. The tissue bank will allow scientists access to children’s tumour tissue, giving hope of finding a

breakthrough to thousands of families”.

Dr Lucy Stead, Head of Glioma Genomics at the University of Leeds and the researcher responsible for opening the Leeds Tissue Bank, said: “To understand human disease, we need to learn from patient tissue. This tissue bank will facilitate a large range of brain cancer research in Leeds, and beyond, and help us advance towards finding a cure.”

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