ACT has awarded £5,000 to support Dr Olcina’s work at the University of Oxford, with the aim of improving both the safety and effectiveness of radiotherapy for children with brain cancers.

Radiotherapy is a common and often effective treatment for children with brain tumours, but it can cause debilitating side effects. Dr Olcina’s team at the University of Oxford has made a promising discovery: blocking a protein called C5aR1 may increase the effectiveness of radiotherapy while simultaneously reducing these harmful effects.

ACT’s grant of £5,000 will fund essential supplies to allow the team to test Avacopan — a drug that blocks C5aR1 — in paediatric brain tumour models, with the goal of demonstrating that radiotherapy can be made both safer and more effective for young patients.