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Former BBC executive Jana Bennett today revealed she is being treated for a brain tumour as she helped launch a scheme to boost research into the deadly disease.
Ms Bennett, 63, whose 30 years at the BBC included launching the iPlayer, has been diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the same tumour that killed former Olympics minister Tessa Jowell last year.
Ms Bennett will tonight talk about the disease at the UK launch of OurBrainBank, an app that will allow GBM patients to share their symptoms with researchers across the world.
OurBrainBank founder Jessica Morris, the British communications strategist who was diagnosed with GBM in 2016, said: “Our mission is to move glioblastoma from being considered terminal to being considered treatable.”
Glioblastoma is the most common adult brain tumour, with about 2,200 cases a year diagnosed in England. Average survival is 14 months. Clinical trials into new treatments can take a decade.
Ms Bennett told the Standard that “so far treatment has been going well”. She will become a trustee of OurBrainBank. Baroness Jowell’s daughter Jess Mills has also given her support.
Ms Bennett told the Standard: “I was diagnosed with GBM earlier this year and through that I got to know Jessica Morris, a human dynamo and founder of the charity, and the very impressive work she is doing to help patients with GBM and further research into the disease.
“The treatment I have had in the NHS – a brilliant surgeon, kind and precise radiologists, etc. isn’t the end of the story but the beginning.
“Increasingly the focus for brain tumours – as well as other hard-to-treat cancers – goes beyond surgery and the radio- and chemotherapy. It now involves understanding the molecular genetics so that drugs and therapies can be tailored and targeted, moving towards more personalised treatment.
“Although standards and approaches to treatment can vary by country, research doesn’t recognise borders. It is only logical to share data to help others, which is part of the patient-centred idea behind OurBrainBank.”
The secure app, which launched in the US last year, enables patients to track their neurological symptoms and share their experience of the physical and emotional impact of treatments in an anonymised way. An advertising campaign was launched across London today.
The charity is working with researchers at Leeds university. Ms Morris, who spoke with Baroness Jowell on several occasions about GBM, said: “Focusing research efforts on the hardest of cancers offers the most cost-effective way of making progress with all cancers.”
Ms Mills, co-founder of the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission, said: “I know my mother would be especially pleased to see the impact that her fellow campaigner (and Brit) Jessica Morris is bringing to our shared mission.”
OurBrainBank.org/UK
