The raffle alone – which included some fabulous prizes - made £1300. We will share how much was raised in total in due course.
The guest speaker was Dr Melanie Flint, a reader in cancer research and a leader of a stress and breast cancer program at the University of Brighton. She is currently co-leader of Brighton and Sussex Cancer Research Network and theme leader for cancer in the Centre for Stress and Age-Related Disease.
She was welcomed by Gwen Young from Crowborough Acorns for Cancer Research UK, who said that since the committee was founded seven years ago, it has raised £53,000 for CRUK.
Dr Flint explained how CRUK was working to Discover, Detect, Prevent and Treat cancer. She then outlined nine current challenges which cancer is throwing at us. These include aging – the longer we live, the greater our risk of cancer; early onset cancers (in the under 50s), which could be partly due to genetics; and solid tumours in children – which are particularly hard to treat.
Dr Flint then highlighted some exciting developments currently, such as immunotherapy and particularly how this could be used for triple negative breast cancer patients; AI or machine/deep learning and how it can be used to analyse the data from cancer patients and also read scans; and developments in drug development. She particularly drew guests to the benefits of repurposing drugs for cancer – in much the same way as the existing drug dexamethasone was used in covid patients. This was not only cheaper but avoided the 10-15 years needed from research to launch of a new drug.
She concluded by saying that every penny donated to CRUK makes a difference.
The next Crowborough Acorns for Cancer Research UK fundraiser is a Band Night, also at Crowborough Rugby Club, on the evening of Friday 6 October. It will feature Into the Blue, a five-piece band with the lead singer Vikkii Webb-Medhurst (from The Voice). Tickets are £22 and available from Sue at nigsue@me.com
