Beating cancer at NTU
02 May 2013
Back from a great day yesterday at Clifton campus to celebrate some of the work done by the John van Geest Cancer Research Centre.
The whole Centre was set up thanks to the mind blowingly brilliant Professor Bob Rees and the generous donations of the John and Lucille van Geest Foundation. The Foundation itself is being wound up, so at the event the couple's daughter, Gussy Marlowe, presented a final cheque of £7.4 MILLION.
That's an awful lot of money and goes to show how much confidence the foundation has in the groundbreaking work being carried out at the JvGCRC.
The interesting thing of course is what will happen next? Over the next few years some serious fundraising will have to start to allow the Centre to continue into the next decade and beyond, working on key genetic markers to help spot and beat prostate and breast cancers.
A long term plan is being devised now but I hope alumni will want to contribute eventually, in however small a way. NTU helps fund the Centre running costs, so all donations go directly to the work undertaken there.
We're all affected by cancer and great strides are being made in beating it. However, as I enjoyed a lovely lunch yesterday and celebrated as the cheque presentation was made I was thinking about a 17 year old called Josh who I met last week and who lost his mum to cancer 10 days ago. Her funeral was being held yesterday, just as I was sitting down to lunch.
There's clearly a lot of work still to be done - and I hope, in time - when the fundraising plans are drawn up, that you'll help NTU lead the way in beating cancer.
Stephen