The Future Leaders programme was established to support early-career academic and clinical researchers in neuro-oncology, helping them become leading experts in the field. The award provides up to £1.8 million in funding over 12 years and includes the resources needed to set up an independent laboratory. After completing the initial three-year phase, postdoctoral fellows are eligible to apply for a four-year Junior Fellowship to continue their research with additional support for themselves and a research associate.
Two new Junior Fellows, Dr Ola Rominiyi and Dr Christopher Mount, have each been awarded £600,000 over four years to advance their research. Dr Rominiyi’s work focuses on DNA repair mechanisms in glioblastoma, revealing that different regions of the same tumour repair DNA in diverse ways before treatment. In his Junior Fellowship, he will continue investigating treatment resistance by studying rare tissue samples from patients who received experimental therapies prior to surgery.
Dr Mount previously identified predictable responses of glioblastoma cells to various CAR-T cell treatments, uncovering new targets to enhance therapy effectiveness. His Junior Fellowship will build on this work, aiming to engineer CAR-T cells specifically tailored for glioblastoma and IDH-mutant high-grade gliomas, accelerating their potential clinical application.
