Until recently, the future for Sara Sjölund seemed, at best, uncertain. Having been diagnosed with brain cancer in 2018, at the age of just 38, the businesswoman from London had undergone a raft of treatments, to no avail. Radiotherapy, chemotherapy, surgery – all failed to halt the cruel march of the disease that hits more than 12,000 Britons a year and vanishingly few survive. Despite her medical team’s best efforts, her cancer – a type known as an astrocytoma – kept growing. While the outlook for many cancers, from breast to skin and even lung cancer – once considered a death sentence – have improved dramatically over the last few decades, the odds for those with a brain tumour remain stubbornly poor. Overall just one in ten patients are alive ten years after diagnosis. This is partly to do with the speed brain cancer often spreads, but also due to a lack of treatments able to successfully combat it.
