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Delivering world-class research is at the heart of what we do here at The Christie. We foster an environment that values innovation, where brand new ideas and novel treatments are encouraged.

Focusing the best minds means we can maximise the potential of research carried out at The Christie. And this means that patients can take part in more innovative clinical trials and gain greater access to the latest treatment methods.

By helping us fund new clinical researchers on our Fellowship Programme, you can help make these latest treatment methods a reality. And by doing this, you can hopefully help to improve patient outcomes and care.

Please donate to the Medical Oncology Fellowship Programme today using the form below.

How the Fellowship Programme is helping

Unlike busy NHS consultant schedules, clinical fellows as part of the programme are given a greater amount of time to drive new research ideas forward.

Each of them specialises in a different cancer type, and they have made excellent progress – carrying out research, publishing the outcomes of their work and representing The Christie on international professional committees.

You can see what some of our clinical fellows are working on below, and how their progress could help improve patient outcomes.

Dr Britton was appointed 1 year ago as a Clinical Research Fellow in the breast cancer team. She attends research clinics to ensure that Christie breast cancer patients are offered clinical trials where available, and is working with fellow researchers to develop an exciting trial to improve outcomes for breast, lung and renal cancer patients receiving immunotherapy treatments.

Patients on the trial will be given Celecoxib, an anti-inflammatory drug that is more commonly used to treat arthritis.

Previous research showed that inflammation within cancer tumours can help them to grow and spread, and small-scale evidence suggests Celecoxib can help improve a patient’s response to immunotherapy. Dr Britton’s team now want to investigate this more fully, working with patients at The Christie and other cancer centres across the UK.

On joining the programme, one of Dr Emma Searle’s aims had been to give better clinical trial access to local haematology patients, who previously had to travel to centres in the South of England to take part in them.

Her fellowship has enabled her to spend crucial time developing early phase haematology research experience and visiting UK centres delivering early phase clinical trials. It proved to be the springboard Dr Searle needed, and she now works full time as a Christie consultant delivering experimental therapy to patients with relapsed and refractory leukaemia, myelodysplastic syndromes and myeloma.

Dr Lewis is working on research that will help us to better understand sarcopenia – or muscle loss – and ultimately improve patients’ quality of life.

She is investigating two common symptoms associated with cancer. One is appetite loss, which is a poorly understood but very common and distressing symptom, especially amongst patients with cancer of the stomach.

The other work is around sarcopenia, or loss of muscle. She is working to understand how it corresponds with physical fitness, and how that might relate to treatment side effects which have a major impact on patients’ quality of life.

Dr Shah is part of a team working on a clinical trial that aims to improve quality of life for patients with pancreatic cancer by improving assessment, diagnosis and management of pancreatic exocrine insufficiency (PEI).

Pancreatic cancers can cause problems with digestion of food. As a result, patients with this type of cancer can lose weight suddenly – this can make patients either too unwell to start or continue treatment.

Dr Shah hopes the information obtained from this study will help to provide better nutritional assessment and support for patients with pancreatic tumours in the future.

Why we need your help

The potential for research is vast. For every new idea we explore, we want a team of experts behind us working towards the same goal.

This is why the researchers on the Fellowship Programme are so valuable. These dedicated experts come from all over the world to gain a unique experience working within the cancer disease groups at The Christie.

By supporting this incredible research programme, you could help us to maximise the potential of research into new treatments by funding new clinical fellows posts.

New research ideas and ground-breaking clinical trials help real cancer patients. Patients like Tracy Mason, whose cervical cancer returned to her lymphatic system in 2018. Her consultant started her on a clinical trial at The Christie involving a new immunotherapy drug - now, more than 2 years later, her tumour has reduced in size by 70%. You can read Tracy's story and see why she's backing more support for clinical fellows.

Our ethos is to never be complacent, and to keep working to find newer and better treatments. To launch clinical trials that bring patients hope of better outcomes. To discover new treatment methods that cause less pain and unwanted side effects. And to make cancer care less disruptive, so patients spend less time in hospital and more time enjoying their lives.

Let’s help our amazing researchers to keep up their incredible work and deliver more patient breakthroughs.

Please consider a gift to the Medical Oncology Fellowship Programme today.

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