Brain tissue is key when it comes to diagnosing, treating, and researching brain cancer. Typically, brain cancer patients have some tissue extracted when they are being diagnosed and treated. But for most, this is being done in the wrong way.

The campaign for Owain's Law is calling for tissue freezing to be made standard for every single patient in the UK, so they can access the latest treatments and all modern research methods that need intact, frozen tissue and DNA to work.

The campaign was launched in 2025 by Ellie James, whose husband Owain tragically died a year earlier from brain cancer. Owain, like so many patients in the UK, could not fully access the latest advanced treatments for brain cancer, because most of his brain tissue was not properly stored after surgery. 

In the UK the chances of surviving brain cancer have barely improved in four decades, as basic treatment methods remain largely the same. Tissue freezing is the crucial building block for progress: by making sure every Trust and cancer centre in the UK can freeze every patient sample, and by ensuring patients are kept fully informed and in control of this process, we can give every patient a fighting chance.