Campaign's House of Lords awards reception

Oakwood School receiving Campaign's 'School of the Year' award from Baroness Fookes

Apologies that it has all gone a bit quiet in this blog. The last few weeks have been very inwardly focused on business planning, budgeting, risk assessments and other vital but not very bloggable stuff.

Last night was our annual reception at the House of Lords very graciously hosted by our very first patron, Baroness Fookes. For once the sun shone and our guests were able to go out onto the terrace and enjoy the wonderful view over the River Thames. The event runs like clockwork: as a charity that made its name with events, we have a well-honed plan and crisp teamwork from all staff. All I have to do is make the speech and walk around and talk to people.

It enables us to bring the people who raise the money together with the scientists whose research they are funding. It is important for the scientists to hear their stories so that they are not too distant from the process, and judging from the many excited comments I had from people who had spoken to the scientist whose research they are supporting – our scientists did us proud.

There are awards for the top research team of the year and a number of fundraising and volunteer awards. It is always very difficult to decide these as everyone there has a story to tell and many have gone to great lengths to raise money. Lots of tears and hugs as well. See the list of award winners here.

There was some anxiety from the scientific community about the Charity Research Support Fund which I have written about in the past. Fundraisers were also concerned that we might be forced to support less research if this support is not sustained.

I was also able to share with everyone our delight in achieving The Sunday Times 100 Best Small Companies to Work For 2010 (number 91) and achieving a 2 Star Status in Best Companies Accreditation 2010. More importantly we were third on the list where staff were asked if they felt they made a difference.

As I said to everyone there, “I am in no doubt that the main reason we all feel that we make a difference is because of all of you. You are our inspiration and our motivation whether it is because we know that we are supporting the best scientists to do the best research or because of all the people who help us raise the money. You can be confident that we are spending the money you have worked so hard to raise most effectively to improve diagnosis, treatment and survival.”

Another day, another ground-breaking discovery!

If you read the papers or watched the news over the weekend you would think that everyone at Breast Cancer Campaign is busy working on how we close down the charity because no more research is needed. We are moments away from a vaccine to prevent breast cancer.

OK – that is an exaggeration – but not much. “Jab ‘to prevent breast cancer’ may be trialled on women in a year: A revolutionary jab that could prevent and treat breast cancer has been developed”.

As with all these things the reality is quite a bit further from what was printed. I won’t attempt to deal with the science of this, and I am sure that our scientists will have a lot to say about it, but while the research itself is interesting we are not facing a vaccine for breast cancer any time soon. For the non-scientific I think that the article by Dr Mark Porter in today’s Times put it very well.

The breast cancer vaccine is great news — for mice genetically prone to the disease.

UK researchers are generally more restrained in their claims but US researchers are less so, possibly for the reasons Porter outlines.

It isn’t that simple – one of the biggest advances in treatment in the past few years – Herceptin – only works for about 25 per cent of breast cancers. As Dennis Slamon, the scientist whose work over 20 years ago led to the development of Herceptin says, “the only thing that breast cancers have in common is the organ of the body in which they occur”. It isn’t one disease, there won’t be one cure or one way of preventing it, and one drug or new breakthrough won’t fit all.

Breast cancer research cash is in danger of drying up

Our third Scientific Conference is taking place today with a packed schedule and over 300 delegates from all over the UK and from as far away as Canada, the USA, Nigeria, Poland and Australia.

I will indulge myself my repeating here some facts about Breast Cancer Campaign -

Our mission is to beat breast cancer by funding innovative world-class research to understand how breast cancer develops, leading to improved diagnosis, treatment, prevention and cure.

We are a serious player in the breast cancer research field, currently supporting 113 research projects, worth over £17.1 million in 40 centres of excellence across the UK and Ireland. Over the past 14 years, the charity has awarded 302 grants with a total value of over £31 million to universities, medical schools and research institutes across the UK, and now also in Ireland.

As I told the delegates – they all know that breast cancer is a high profile disease and as the most common cancer in the UK it should be. The picture is completely different for women today than in the 70’s. Thirty years ago only half of women with breast cancer survived for more than five years. Today that figure is around 80 per cent. Women are living longer after breast cancer but simply surviving is not enough and five years is not a lifetime.

This is the good news. The bad news is that breast cancer research cash is in danger of drying up. Potential new life saving breast cancer treatments may never reach the patient if the new Coalition Government fails to continue supporting charity-funded research.

We know it is a difficult and uncertain financial climate but we need reassurance that support funding will remain consistent. A ‘quick fix’ cut will have long term implications for breast cancer research and ultimately impact on the lives of people with breast cancer.

Currently the Charity Research Support Fund contributes to the cost of the research institutions’ utilities such as heating and lighting, leaving medical research charities like ourselves free to fund research.

This is a conference by scientists for scientists – Campaign needs to ensure that the infrastructure continues to be provided to house their research and we can continue to support it.

I saw in the paper this morning that the departing Chief Secretary of the Treasury, Liam Byrne, left a letter for the new guy – David Laws, “Dear Chief Secretary, I am afraid there is no money, Kind regards and good luck.” Apparently it was a joke – just shows how out of touch with the world those chaps who run the country can be.

The abstracts are published today in Breast Cancer Research as a supplement.

Exciting week for Breast Cancer Campaign

Monday morning will see 30 of the top scientists and clinicians working in the breast cancer field debating on the allocation of research grants. Those that make it through to this meeting of our Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) will have already been reviewed by at least two and up to six or seven independent experts in the field from across the UK and as far afield as Houston and Sydney. Those that make it through to this stage are then debated and discussed.

My research colleagues at Campaign and I stand back from this process – a huge amount of work goes into managing the process (all paperless by the way) but we leave it to the experts to decide what is the best research – what will make the greatest impact on people with breast cancer in the future. They then make their recommendations which go forward to the trustee board.

It is obviously nerve-wracking for the applicants but also for us: it is no secret that money is very tight and, as others have cut back, the number of research grants coming to us is increasing and tough decisions have to be made. I wish I had a money tree!

What I find so extraordinary is that these scientists do not get paid anything for reviewing the research; the SAB are rewarded with a night in Travelodge (no criticism of Travelodge but it ain’t the Dorchester) not to forget the pizza dinner. That doesn’t account for the time spent in doing the reviewing – about two hours per grant and each board member could have up to seven or eight to review.

You may wonder why I am harping on about this – it is because I think that so few people outside the research field realise this – it is altruism but also a passion for research and a commitment to changing lives.

There may be even more pressure on charity funded research which is why our election campaign was about the Charity Research Support Fund – our plea to Government – please commit to maintaining this – see my blog Please read on even if politics isn't really your thing – more about that another day.

Tuesday sees our third Scientific Conference – sold out – more about that tomorrow.

P.S. If you wonder what I have been doing since the last blog - my incandescence of rage (if there is such a thing) about the absence of women from the election campaign and after could not be suppressed so I didn’t trust myself to write anything – just focused on the day job!

A perfect storm

It looks as if I was not alone in thinking what I was thinking in my previous blog post. Where are the women in this election campaign? Within moments of posting the blog I received a letter from a fellow Forum UK member, Kate Jenkins, on the subject which I was more than delighted to sign. You can see it here and then on Saturday there was an article in The Times by Janice Turner.

I am not totally sure where the fault lies – is it the reluctance of the parties to put women forward and is this because the media focus on what they are wearing rather than what they are saying. The press has been awash with interviews and photos of the wives - wonderful that the three party leaders have supportive wives but they are not being elected and their views should not influence us.

I don’t think this discussion will end on Thursday – there are too many of us who feel that this has been a testosterone-fuelled campaign to the detriment of all!

They think it’s all over – it will be on May 7th

Thank goodness the leadership debates are over. I didn’t watch more than a few moments and still think that there is something barking mad about judging who you will vote for on the basis of a few hours performance on television by three people......

Read the manifestos!!

Also – where are the women? I haven’t done the research but my instinct is that the wives of said leaders received more press attention than women PPCs. It is not that there aren’t any women candidates – the serious stories are going to the men. Very disappointing.

Our own campaign has done really well – as predicted there has been much publicity about health, treatment and waiting times amongst other health issues and, despite my predictions that this would not get any coverage – there was some limited publicity about science and medical research. We supported collaborative efforts on health but restricted our efforts to asking our supporters to write to their local prospective parliamentary candidates about something called the Charity Research Support Fund.

This is so that our donations go further in improving treatments and finding a cure for breast cancer.

Thanks to all the 840 supporters who did contact their PPCs and so far we have 574 signed up.

It isn’t too late to help – Click now on: www.breastcancercampaign.org/election

London Marathon 2010

If it’s Monday morning and my voice is croaky it must be the day after the Marathon. It is a slightly surreal experience being on a crowded Northern Line at 8am on a Sunday morning – pretty surreal being anywhere at 8am on a Sunday morning. There was a mixture of runners, family and friends – one runner-to-be was already wrapped in the foil blanket which is given out at the end of the race which only added to the surreal-ness!

We had three groups of staff and volunteers at the race – some were moving between cheering points as the race moved on but I was stationed with colleagues at Mudchute (Mile 17). The moment when the first wheelchair racers come through – you know it is “game on”. It is one thing watching this on TV and another close up – to see how flimsy those wheelchairs look and how much human power is required is very humbling.

The elite runners and club runners come through singly or in small groups and then the mass of the so-called fun runners come through and keep coming through. I don’t know why they are called “fun-runners” as there is nothing fun about it. The weeks and months of training and then so many of them also raise money – lots of money.

The challenge as a supporter is to spot the runner, call their name loudly enough (lots of accompanying noise as well) so that they see you are there and get that little extra bit of encouragement. Mile 17 is a tough place too and some of the pain was evident.

Our runners all did amazingly well, our fastest was Vito who finished in an incredible 02:58:27 and the amazing Diana with her two new hips was still smiling at mile 25 and went on to finish in 07:10:16. I am sure Diana won’t mind my saying - she celebrated her 76th birthday the day before her eighth London Marathon and only took up running after having had breast cancer.

Amazing people doing amazing things!