Question reference: S6W-24364
- Asked by: Beatrice Wishart, MSP for Shetland Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
- Date lodged: 8 January 2024
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Current status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 19 January 2024
Question
To ask the Scottish Government whether it plans to create specific funding schemes for brain tumour research.
Answer
The Scottish Government has no plans to create specific funding schemes for Brain Tumour research.
Within the Scottish Government, funding of Health and Care Research comes under the remit of the Chief Scientist Office (CSO).
The CSO's Translational Clinical Studies (TCS) Committee and the Health Improvement, Protection and Services Research (HIPS) Committee each meet twice per year to consider funding applications. Details of the application process are published on the CSO website.
https://www.cso.sc ot.nhs.uk/grant-funding/response-mode-funding-schemes/. Applications on Brain Tumour research are welcomed.
CSO provides funding support through NHS Research Scotland (NRS) for infrastructure to support the running of clinical trials in the NHS here. this includes the NRS Cancer Research Network whose role is to increase, support and sustain clinical trial activity in cancer care in Scotland https://www.nhsresearchscotland.org.uk/research-areas/cancer
The NRS Cancer Research Network is currently supporting 13 Brain Tumour Clinical studies with over 190 patients recruited.
Through UK-wide funding agreements, researchers based in Scotland are able to access research funding programmes administered by the National Institute for Health & Care Research (NIHR). Within their individual remits, these programmes can consider applications for research in Brain Tumours. CSO is working with the health research community in Scotland to ensure awareness of these opportunities and to maximise the number of high quality applications from Scotland to the NIHR research funding programmes going forward.