Funding Neuro awarded £20,000 grant from Crerar Hotels Trust

THE OWNER of the Loch Fyne Hotel and Isle of Mull Hotel is supporting a charity working to save the lives of children suffering from a rare brain cancer.

Crerar Hotels Trust has announced its latest grant of £20,000 has been awarded to Funding Neuro.

Funding Neuro will use the grant to support a clinical trial into a revolutionary new treatment for a highly aggressive brain tumour Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG).

This cancer mostly affects children between the ages of six to ten and has been considered untreatable. After diagnosis, a child’s average life expectancy is just nine months.

No child has ever survived DIPG.

Professor Steven Gill has devised a method of treating DIPG by surgically implanting a micro-catheter into the brain which delivers drugs directly into the tumour, known as Convection Enhanced Delivery.

He is currently treating a group of youngsters on compassionate grounds with stunning results - average life expectancy has doubled from nine to 18 months and a number of children’s tumours have dramatically shrunk.

Crerar Hotels operates 14 hotels and inns across the UK, of which 13 are based in Scotland. Uniquely, up to 50 per cent of the group’s distributable profits are donated to charities operating within areas where Crerar Hotels are based.

The trust has awarded £7m of grants to more than 400 organisations in the last 16 years.

Paddy Crerar, chairman of the Crerar Hotels Trust and chief executive of Crerar Hotels, said: ‘We are delighted to have made this award to Funding Neuro and look forward to hearing how this funding helps impact their work.