The expert in charge of team funded by Bradford charity's efforts

Following the death of their colleague, Andrea Key, staff at Emerald Publishing set up the charity in her memory with the hope of funding research into brain tumours – the devastating condition which curtailed the life of the Bradford mum-of-two at the age of 42.

They hoped to raise £100,000. With the dedicated support of fundraisers – families who have lost relatives to the disease and sufferers who, despite their illness, are willing to take on charitable challenges to fund desperately-needed research – the charity went on to raise £1m, allowing it to launch a research lab.

In collaboration with children’s cancer charity Candlelighters, Andrea’s Gift is funding the laboratory at the Leeds Institute of Molecular Medicine. Fundraisers and local dignitaries, among them Lady Emma Ingilby, patron of Candlelighters, and Lady Kathy Botham, patron of Andrea’s Gift, are to gather next week for a special commemorative event.

Under the leadership of senior scientist Sean Lawler, who worked extensively in America before returning to his home county of Yorkshire in December, the Translational Neuro-oncology team will be dedicated to researching brain tumours in the hope their findings will lead to improved treatments, prevention and cure.

Sean will be continuing his research into glioblastomas, the most common form of brain tumours, as well as focusing on paediatric tumours which, he says, are currently under-researched.

Around 16,000 brain tumours per year are diagnosed in the UK. They are the most common cause of death in children and the under-40s, yet receive less than one per cent of national cancer funding.

Having young children of his own – eight-year-old Maeve and two-year-old Sean Francis – compounds Sean’s interest. “Having children yourself, you put yourself in the shoes of those who are affected by the disease. I cannot imagine what these people go through,” he says.

In the States, much of his work focused on signal transduction, looking into the way cells interpret messages and what happens when it goes wrong and causes diseases such as cancer.

The 44-year-old, who grew up in Calverley, studied bio-chemistry at Edinburgh University and completed a PhD in molecular biology. “Biology was the most interesting thing I had ever studied, so I kept doing it,” he says.

The arrival of DNA technologies compounded his interest. After completing his PhD in 1992, he secured a job in a lab at San Francisco University, and went on to lead a research team.

The opportunity to return to Yorkshire came through the role to head the new research lab funded by Andrea’s Gift and Candelighters.

He now lives in Guiseley with his American-born wife Michelle and family, and is looking forward to working in a ‘first-class’ research centre alongside the clinicians, patients, fundraisers and supporters of the charities driving the venture.

Sean is already striving for the lab to become a centre of excellence. “In the UK, brain tumour research is relatively under-funded. I think we can establish this as a major translational lab in the brain tumour field in the UK and, hopefully, we will draw international recognition,” he says.

Paul Chumas, consultant neurosurgeon at Leeds General Infirmary, says the opening of the neuro-oncology lab is “a huge step forward”.

“We now have two full-time neuro-oncology scientists and a further scientist dedicated to research into brain metastases,” he says.

“Leeds University has gone from having no formal brain tumour research programme to having one of the largest dedicated neuro-oncology laboratories in the country. Andrea’s Gift and Candlelighters are rightly proud of their achievement in setting up a laboratory of this calibre in Yorkshire.”

Carol Robertson, fundraiser and charity development manager with Andrea’s Gift, says the launch of the research lab symbolises eight years of “hard work and graft”.

She says the aim was always to fund research, but the charity never envisaged it would be part of the team funding a dedicated lab.

“I can’t quite believe we have got there, even though it’s what we have been working towards for eight years,” she says. “It gives people hope, and there has never been that much hope because the level of research has not been there.

“We will soon be on our way to be able to call ourselves a centre of excellence.”