Cellular and Molecular Medicine

Cellular and Molecular Neuro-Oncology Group

Head of Group: Professor Geoff Pilkington BSc PhD CBiol FSBiol FRCPath

For further information visit the Portsmouth Cellular Neuroscience site  

The incidence of primary brain tumours has risen at an alarming level over the past few decades and these tumours generally bring with them a very poor prognosis. Although they only rarely metastasise to distant organs, one of their major biological features is diffuse cellular invasion of the brain itself.

The Cellular and Molecular Neuro-oncology Research Group, which was established at Portsmouth following the re-location of Professor Geoff Pilkington from King's College London in 2003, has focussed its research on the cellular and molecular mechanisms which underlie the migration of tumour cells and their invasion of normal brain tissue.

Once candidate "target" molecules have been identified, anti-invasive and pro-apoptotic translational medicine approaches are used in an attempt to formulate novel therapies, aimed at improving survival times and quality of life for patients. This could potentially lead to cures for the many different histological types of tumour that are included in this category of primary or intrinsic brain tumours.