Geoff Pilkington

I have spent my entire career in brain tumour research, having started work on chemical neuro-carcinogenesis where I studied brain cancer stem cells and brain tumour development at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School in the early 1970s and the subsequent spent 23 years at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College, London, latterly as Professor of Experimental Neuro-oncology. In 2003, I moved to the School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, at Portsmouth, as Professor of Cellular and Molecular Neuro-oncology and Director of Research. The research focus of my group is on the development of models for the study of intrinsic brain tumours, elucidation of the mechanisms underlying diffuse local invasive behaviour in glioma and development of novel strategies for mitochondrial mediation of apoptosis in glioma.

I am currently President of the British Neuro-oncology Society, having been vice-president for the past two years and Iregularly attend the quarterly all party parliamentary group meetings on brain tumours at Westminster. I recently established SEBTA (the South of England Brain Tumour Alliance) which brings together seven regional brain tumour research, diagnosis and therapy centres, in order to maximize research data from minimal tissue and cell resources and to fast track lab-based research towards translational medicine and clinical trials.