Call for ‘Owain's law' to aid brain tumour treatment
He said: 'Owain was only 34 years old when he was diagnosed with a 14cm, malignant, grade-four brain tumour in his right frontal lobe. His neurosurgeon said it was one of the biggest tumours she'd ever come across in her professional career.
'It was an absolutely devastating blow to Owain, his wife Ellie, who is in the public gallery today, and his daughter Amelia, who at the time was only 18 months old. Until then, Owain had always been a fit and healthy young man.'
Dr David said the family turned to private treatment and found a personalised vaccine that used a patient's tumour tissue to educate the immune system to recognise cancerous cells.
He told the Senedd: 'The problem here, however, was that Owain needed fresh frozen tumour tissue to develop a sufficient dose of the vaccine. Owain had had 7cm of tissue surgically removed but, unfortunately, only 1cm of this was fresh frozen and could be used.'
The Caerphilly Senedd member explained Owain only had three doses of vaccine when it should have been more like 30 doses, but he initially made a remarkable recovery.
'Unfortunately, metastasis caused his tumour to recur elsewhere,' he said. 'This time, the tumour was too aggressive and Owain sadly passed away in June 2024.
'Had there been more, we feel that Owain would still be alive today.'
Dr David said fresh frozen tissue is regarded as the gold-standard approach and can be used for vaccines, therapies, research and genome sequencing.
He explained: 'This kind of use, though, can only be done when the tumour is fresh frozen, which it wasn't in Owain's case. Owain's law seeks to address this. It seeks to make this the default process for storing surgically removed tissue in Wales.'
Jeremy Miles, for the Welsh Government, stressed the need to proceed with care and warned a legal requirement to freeze all brain tumour tissue risks unintended consequences.
While the non-binding motion was agreed unanimously, Owain's law is unlikely to proceed without Welsh ministers' full support. But Dr David argued the UK and other countries will eventually introduce such a law as the availability of tissue becomes key to treatment.
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