Tuesday 22 June 2010
A new academic partnership will be officially launched next week when Mount Vernon Cancer Centre joins the long-standing collaboration between The Royal Marsden and The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR).
Celebrating the launch of this exciting new partnership, The Royal Marsden, the ICR and East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust, which manages the Mount Vernon Cancer Centre, will be hosting a seminar for invited guests from all three organisations, as well as local MPs and other dignitaries, on Monday 28 June.
The new partnership will make a major contribution, through translational research linked to clinical trials, to the ongoing improvements in personalised medicine and will give patients wider access to the best and latest in cancer treatment and care.
The partnership will help both patients and researchers, as it will create access to a much larger pool of infrastructure and patients for studies that will take cancer treatment forward. It will also double the number of people who will potentially benefit due to increased access to clinical trials.
It will also provide greater opportunities for new and existing translational research initiatives on biomarkers in both common and rare cancers, and identify patients most likely to benefit from new treatments.
The seminar, which is being held at The Royal Marsden’s Conference Centre in Chelsea, will be opened by the Chief Executives from The Royal Marsden, the ICR and East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust.
Presentations, spanning a wide range of topics including clinical collaborations in breast cancer and personalised medicine, will be made by a host of leading experts from all three organisations.
Cally Palmer, Royal Marsden Chief Executive, said: “This is a wonderful opportunity for all three partners to make a difference to cancer research and treatment.
“Our new partnership with Mount Vernon will contribute significantly to groundbreaking cancer research and clinical trials, and to the further development of the latest and best treatments for our patients. We have a high regard for the work undertaken by Mount Vernon, and look forward to strengthening relationships between our clinical and scientific teams”.
Professor Peter Rigby, ICR Chief Executive, said: “Progress in medical science is very much a collaborative effort. The ICR and The Royal Marsden have worked closely together for the past 100 years, and now form the acknowledged leading academic and clinical partnership for cancer in the UK.
“This unique relationship allows cutting-edge research to immediately be translated into improvements in patient care, and can only be strengthened by Mount Vernon’s involvement. We are very excited to be announcing this historic partnership.”
Nick Carver, Chief Executive, East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust, which manages the Mount Vernon Cancer Centre, said: “We carry out a great deal of high quality research at our cancer centre, but we have recognised for some time the need to be part of a wider collaboration that would help guarantee the longer-term future of this work at Mount Vernon. Which is why we are delighted to enter in to this exciting partnership with The Royal Marsden and The Institute for Cancer Research.”
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Media contact: The Royal Marsden Press Office on 020 7808 2107
Notes to Editors:
The Royal Marsden was the first hospital in the world dedicated to cancer treatment and research into the causes of cancer. Today, as The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, together with its academic partner The Institute of Cancer Research, form the largest comprehensive cancer centre in Europe with over 40,000 patients from the UK and abroad seen each year. It is a centre of excellence, and the only NHS Trust to achieve the highest possible ranking in the Healthcare Commission’s Annual Health Check for the fourth year in a row.
For further information please contact Naomi Owen on 0207 808 2107 or email [email protected]
The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR)
- The ICR is Europe’s leading cancer research centre
- The ICR has been ranked the UK’s top academic research centre, based on the results of the Higher Education Funding Council’s Research Assessment Exercise
- The ICR works closely with partner The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust to ensure patients immediately benefit from new research. Together the two organisations form the largest comprehensive cancer centre in Europe
- The ICR has charitable status and relies on voluntary income, spending 90 pence in every pound of total income directly on research
- As a college of the University of London, the ICR also provides postgraduate higher education of international distinction
- Over its 100-year history, the ICR’s achievements include identifying the potential link between smoking and lung cancer which was subsequently confirmed, discovering that DNA damage is the basic cause of cancer and isolating more cancer-related genes than any other organisation in the world.
For more information visit www.icr.ac.uk
Mount Vernon Cancer Centre
The Mount Vernon Cancer Centre became part of the East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust in April 2005. It is one of the country’s foremost cancer centres, serving a population of some two million people in North-west London and the northern Home Counties. Some 450 staff work at the cancer centre, which has an annual income in excess of £30m for specialist cancer services. Over 5,000 new patients are treated annually at Mount Vernon through radiotherapy and chemotherapy, as well as those returning for follow-up courses of treatment. From the autumn of 2010, the cancer centre will have the first ever CyberKnife facility (a new form of radiotherapy) available anywhere in the NHS. For further information on the Mount Vernon Cancer Centre, visit http://www.enherts-tr.nhs.uk/our-hospitals/mount-vernon-cancer-centre/.