FUNDRAISING FOR A CURE

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2014 proved to be an outstanding year for PLANETS, with our target of £100,000 being smashed by reaching an unbelievable £152,500 pounds.

Thank you to all of the many hundreds of people who have helped us raise such a fantastic sum over this last year. I apologise for not being able to mention you all, there are literally so many of you, but the following list gives just a flavour of the many groups and people who have contributed to this massive fund raising effort. We have tried to highlight a mixture of large and small events and contributions, because over the years in total we have raised as much from our small events and individual contributions as the big events, so we need and value every one of you the same. This year some of our biggest donors have asked to remain anonymous and we respect that, but every donor and fund raiser, large or small, anonymous or high profile, has our heart felt thanks.”

• Ros Dartmouth – Michael Dartmouth Memorial Burns Night dinner
• Juliet Bennett, Karen Smith and Julian Smith – Brighton Marathon
• Giles Vigar – Cycled to Holland
• Tim Douglas – Great Wall of China Marathon
• Ronny and Christine Allan – Hadrian’s Wall walk
• Stuart Wayment – for organising the Great Ferndown Firewalk (and Arjun for doing it!)
• Julie Laming and Steve Davis – Bournemouth Marathon Festival
• Pauline Pugh – West Wellow Methodist Church Afternoon Tea
• Sainsbury’s Hedge End and all the volunteers who have given up time to collect in store
• Ian Douglas – donating proceeds of his Nepal Trek E-book
• Anonymous donor of £50K
• Graham Green (Traser Watches) – ongoing support and donations
• Team Green from Bournemouth for taking part in the Kamikaze and Great South
• Bayview Developments – Golf Day
• Susan Rostron – Church Music Nights
• John Ingram – Fireworks Party
• Cathi Holgate – Cake Sale at Christchurch
• Charlie Michael – London to Brighton Bike Ride
• Naomi Drummond – Zip wire down Mount Snowdon
• John Knight – Rat Race Coast to Coast Scotland Challenge
• Ben Holdaway – Raid Pyrenees Cycle Challenge
• The people of Braishfield who through the Flower Arranging Society, United Reform Church, village shop and All Saints Church, have between them arranged dozens of fund raising activities.

Furthermore, a big thank you to all our supporters who took part in the Great South Run, New Forest Rotary Bike Ride, the Spinnaker Tower Abseil and Spinnaker Tower Sleepover (well done Tori for organising the latter 2) the Petersfield Community Church Choir Concert and Auction of Promises, the list goes on and on!

The total funds raised to date for PLANETS since 2011 is now a staggering £350K, which really does make a difference to patients and their families affected by these cancers.

2015 is certainly set to be our most challenging year as we continue to provide support, purchase more equipment and improve facilities.

Our 2 big goals for 2015 are:

IORT
Introducing IORT (Intra Operative Radio Therapy). Thanks to your incredible efforts Southampton will be the first site in the UK to have a mobile linear accelerator or IORT machine. We are currently out to tender for this equipment. We will be leasing a machine using PLANETS funding as an initial income guarantee having explored the logistics of this service and developed a full business case with a view to us starting to treat cancer patients in the summer of 2015. This will enable us to give radiotherapy to patients in theatre immediately after removing their tumours to reduce the risk of them coming back, by killing any remaining microscopic cancer cells. We had hoped that by funding the first year of the lease we would then be able to secure full NHS funding for this service, however it now seems likely that we will have to fully support this for the 2015-16, 2016-17 and possibly 2017-18 financial years. As we have exceeded our 2014 targets we are already well placed to reach this, but we will need to have another 2 massive fundraising years like 2014 to make the future of this project secure and allow us to support our new research programme.

Research and Development
PLANETS are excited to have joined forces with Pancreatic Cancer UK to provide a grant over a two year period for a pancreatic cancer research project: ́The role of Eps8 in αvβ6-dependent functions in pancreatic cancer invasion’ to be undertaken by Dr Jo Tod. Jo has recently been appointed as an Academic Clinical Lecturer at the University of Southampton, a post that allows her to continue building on this platform of pancreatic research whilst completing her clinical training to become a consultant. In September 2014 she was awarded a Medical Research Grant from Grant Charity/Pancreatic Cancer UK (£47,000) which PLANETS will be matching over two years in order to fund ongoing investigations into mechanisms of PC invasion. By supporting Jo with this funding we will ensure that she has a full time research scientist as a co-worker as well as covering some lab costs. This will enable her to progress her research further and faster and allow her to start looking at genetic studies on our NET tumour bank too.

So as you can see there are exciting times ahead for Team PLANETS! We still have longer term plans to bring in some other new treatments including Lutetium PRRT, Nanoknife and HIPEC as well as other smaller scale research projects all of which will need some support from PLANETS over 2015-2017.

Our target for 2015 is £130k and together we are confident that we can smash this massive fundraising goal again.

The final thank you’s go out to the medical teams such as the nursing, theatre, outpatients, radiology clerical, therapy and medical staff including Emma Ramsey, Jo Dowle, Charlotte Beebee, Liz and all the nurses in E8, theatre 7 and outpatients, who continue to do an incredible job.

We would also like to thank Suzie, Alanna and the Southampton Hospital Charity team who have done a fantastic job giving us administrative support, which keeps our overheads to a minimum.

Finally a massive thanks and 100% gratitude to the PLANETS core fundraising team – Layla, Jo, Emily, Ruth, Ronny and Tori, who continue to be the driving force of the Charity.

Wishing you all a very happy, healthy and prosperous New Year,

Neil Pearce and Brian Stedman

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