Chinwag - Autumn 2019

Corporate news

£4.5 donation to boost research Patients with cancers of the mouth and throat are set to benefit from a phenomenal gift of £4.5m, donated to The Christie by businessman and philanthropist Ian Taylor.

The funding will support the UK’s first ever clinical trials for patients using proton beam therapy, which are due to start later this year. The donation to The Christie is part of £15m pledged by Mr Taylor on behalf of the Taylor Family Foundation to head and neck and proton beam therapy cancer research in the UK. Mr Taylor was treated with proton beam therapy at a clinic in Switzerland in 2018 for throat cancer. The donation will support the work of Dr David Thomson, a specialist in head and neck cancers at The Christie in clinical trials, scientific research, innovation through translational science and the training of future leaders in the treatment of head and neck cancer. The core costs for this UK first trial are being funded by Cancer Research UK, but the Taylor Family Foundation donation will widen access to proton beam therapy trials by helping with patient and carer travel costs for those who live a long way from Manchester and who will need treatment over a seven week period.

Members of the Taylor Family Foundation met with experts at The Christie

The donation will also help to train up future proton beam therapy research leaders through the establishment of The Taylor Family Foundation Proton Fellowship to support three new research fellows working at The Christie. Dr David Thomson said: “This phenomenal donation is incredibly generous, and will make a real difference to patients. In partnership with Cancer Research UK we aim to lead the way in establishing the clinical benefit of proton beam therapy. This will be underpinned by exceptional biological and physical science, to help understand how we can personalise and best use it to improve survival outcomes and long-term quality of life for future patients.” stronger X-rays. The £5.3M machine was part-funded thanks to donations made to The Christie charity. Since the first patient treatment at the UK’s first NHS high energy proton beam centre in December, The Christie is now one of only two sites worldwide to offer both these pioneering radiotherapy treatments. The MR-guided linear accelerator combines magnetic MR scanning and tumour-busting radiotherapy to deliver magnetic resonance radiotherapy in one hi-tech package. Dr Cynthia Eccles, consultant research radiographer at The Christie, said: “This is a significant moment in radiotherapy treatment here at The Christie. Around 40 per cent of people being treated for cancer receive a form of radiotherapy and The Christie accounts for around one in 20 NHS treatments in the UK. “In order to fully unlock the potential of radiotherapy by making it even more precise we need to be at the forefront of technology and this machine allows us to target cancer and avoid healthy tissue while delivering the radiation treatment.”

MR-linac treatment underway

TREATMENT NOWUNDERWAY: L to R Lisa Mcdaid, Rosie Hales, John Rodgers, David Hudson, Prof Ananya Choudhury and Dr Cynthia Eccles

A man diagnosed with three separate cancers within three years became the first patient to be treated at The Christie using a revolutionary radiotherapy machine in May. David Hutson, 60, was treated for prostate cancer using the MR-guided linear accelerator (MR-linac) which is the first machine of its kind to do real-time MRI scans while it targets X-ray radiation beams at tumours, making it more accurate and reducing side effects. Being able to more specifically target tumours and not healthy tissue around them means the machine can use

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