Paediatric ependymoma is a childhood brain tumour with devastating impact.
It is challenging to diagnose and treat, with current methods putting young patients at risk of lasting brain damage, and half of patients experiencing recurrence.
Dr Hannah Jackson has been awarded a Brain Research UK post-doctoral fellowship to support her work on these tumours, exploring a new way to detect and treat them.
Funded out of our first round of fellowship funding, Hannah emerged as an outstanding candidate, working in an area of high unmet need and with a project that looks set to deliver important results.
Ependymoma is the second most common malignant brain tumour in children. It occurs most commonly in children under the age of five years.
These tumours are challenging to treat, with the added complication that the aggressive treatments used can damage the developing brain. This can leave young patients facing lifelong deficits.
And, despite the aggressive treatment, the tumours recur in around half of patients. Very sadly, most of these children will die from the disease.
There is an urgent need for more effective and less damaging methods to diagnose, monitor and treat these tumours in order to improve outcomes for young patients.
Following treatment, doctors use MRI scanning to monitor their young patients and check for signs of recurrence. But cancer cells can remain at levels too low to be detected via MRI, meaning that many patients experience recurrence of disease despite their scans appearing clear. Finding a way to detect the early presence of this so-called minimal residual disease is crucial.
Hannah's research is focused on tiny particles called extracellular vesicles (EVs) that are naturally released from almost all types of cells into the surrounding environment. They can be found in blood and other bodily fluids. Because they carry information from the cells from which they originate, EVs could help identify hidden tumour cells without the need for invasive tests.
During her fellowship, Hannah is setting out to establish whether EVs released by ependymoma cells can be used to detect and monitor the tumour. She will look for look for signs ('markers') on EVs that come from ependymoma cells and test whether these markers can help diagnose and track the disease using patients' blood samples.
Additionally, she will explore whether the EVs can be engineered to help the immune system target and destroy tumour cells, potentially laying the groundwork for a new type of cancer vaccine.
Hannah was awarded her PhD from the University of Nottingham in 2021 following successful completion of a programme of work focused on EVs in another childhood brain tumour called medulloblastoma. This work highlighted the transformative potential of EVs in addressing the challenges of childhood brain tumours.
Following a post-doc position at the University of Cambridge, where she carried out work that paved the way for new EV-based cancer vaccines, she returned to the Children’s Brain Tumour Research Centre in Nottingham, and has built up further experience working with EVs.
Hannah is already well-respected in the field and this Brain Research UK Fellowship provides her with the resources to significantly expand her research, towards her key aim of making a tangible impact for young patients with brain tumours.
‘This opportunity is not just about progressing my research; it is about making a real-world impact by developing tools that could lead to earlier diagnosis, more personalised treatments and, ultimately, better survival rates and quality of life for children with brain tumours.’
Mentored by two renowned experts in the childhood brain tumour field – Dr Timothy Ritzmann and Professor Richard Grundy – Hannah benefits from the strong local environment at the Children’s Brain Tumour Research Centre, where she also has access to valuable clinical samples.
Children with ependymoma face tough odds, with a 50% chance that the tumour will return and a high risk of treatment-related harm.
Hannah's research could lead to new, less invasive methods for detecting and monitoring these tumours, improving early diagnosis and treatment. It could also pave the way for new treatments, including a vaccine that helps the immune system fight the tumour. Ultimately this could improve survival rates and reduce the burden of treatment for children with this tumour.
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