Christie Impact Report 2025

Loving husband honours wife’s memory Mike Rooney’s pledge to honour his late wife Janet’s memory has created a lasting legacy for patients with rare and hard-to-treat cancers.

After losing Janet to bile duct cancer in April 2023, Mike from Todmorden channelled his grief into action. Alongside close friends, he raised over £100,000 for The Christie Charity — funding the creation of The Janet Rooney Fellowship. This vital funding enabled The Christie to appoint Dr Eleni Vrana as a clinical research fellow focusing on hepato-pancreatico biliary (HPB) cancers, which are cancers that start in the liver, pancreas, or bile ducts and neuroendocrine tumours (NETs) which are rare cancers that develop from cells in the body that produce hormones and are most commonly found in the digestive system or lungs. These are both complex and under researched disease areas. Originally from Greece, Dr Vrana says: “The Janet Rooney

Fellowship is giving me the chance to contribute to critical advancements in the diagnosis and treatment of HPB cancers and NETs. I’m deeply grateful to Mike and his fundraisers for this opportunity.” Mike’s fundraising efforts included a major charity dinner and a 500-mile trek across Spain’s Camino de Santiago, completed with friends Nigel Tobias and David Brooks. “Janet’s cancer was difficult to detect, and there’s so little research into bile duct cancer,” says Mike. “I wanted to change that. Knowing this fellowship could help others is incredibly meaningful.”

RIGHT Mike Rooney and Dr Eleni Vrana

22 The Christie Charity Impact Report 2024/25