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x128809_SBRF_p7_cg_x128809_SBRF_p7_cg 29/11/2013 13:43 Page 3 Finding more effective ways to detect and treat cancer Five Years of Funding Timm Cleasby © Lady Elsie The Foundation celebrated its fifth anniversary this year. The charitable fund my husband launched in 2008 continues to go from strength to strength and we’re very proud of everything we’ve been able to achieve. Thanks to the incredible generosity of our supporters, and working in partnership with the NHS, Newcastle University and other charities, we’ve been able to make tremendous progress towards finding m ore effective ways to detect cancer early and treat it. It feels like, together, we’re achieving Bob’s strongly held ambitions to help other people faced with this terrible disease. And there’s still so much more we have planned. Our medical trustees are always looking ahead Sir Bobby with Professor Ruth Plummer just to the next promising new treatments and before the launch of the Foundation equipment. I’m often astounded by the science involved. Sir Bobby launched the Foundation after a request for help from his oncologist Professor Ruth Plummer. This has been a tremendous year for us. I hope this review reflects that. It covers activity before Professor Plummer was treating Sir Bobby as he faced cancer for the fifth - and what he knew would Steve Harper’s wonderful charity game at be the final time. She needed to raise £500,000 to equip a new cancer drug trials centre at the Newcastle United, Mark Allison’s, or I should Northern Centre for Cancer Care (NCCC) and asked him if he knew anyone who might like to say Run Geordie Run’s, challenge to run across donate. Australia and the magnificent team effort that Sir Bobby re sponded by launching a charity to get the money she needed. He described it as ‘like was Sir Bobby’s Breakthrough Auction. We will being at the helm of a team again.’ be sharing news about all these marvellous The Sir Bobby Robson Foundation aims to find more effective ways to detect and treat cancer - fundraising efforts in our next newsletter. and to do so while directly helping patients currently fighting the disease. It also helps fund Once again, we have received wonderful support projects which enhance cancer patient care. from the football community, including a generous In the last five years, the Foundation has been able to: donation from the Football Association on their inaugural Sir Bobby Robson National Football Day. • Equip the Sir Bobby Robson Cancer Trials • Contribute to the Teenage Cancer Unit Research Centre at the NCCC at the Great North Children’s Hospital Unfortunately, there isn’t room to include everything we would like to within this annual • Fund three-year training posts for a specialist • Jointly fund the PET Tracer Production newsletter. The majority of our funds come, as clinical trials nurse and doctor at the NCCC Unit at Newcastle University ever, from relatively small events and donations • Part-fund five years of the complementary • Make the majority charitable contribution and we are hugely grateful to everyone who has therapy programme at the NCCC to ‘stereotactic’ radiotherapy at the NCCC contributed in any way. I know Bob would be • Part-fund the creation of a patient Quiet • Jointly fund a region-wide cancer patient very proud and very grateful too. and Information Area at the NCCC ambulance Bob called the Foundation his ‘last and greatest • Fund a microscope for Leukaemia Research • Fund an ImagestreamX (ISx), which allows team’ and that’s just what it remains - a fantastic Cytogenetics Group at the Royal Victoria scientists to see circ ulating cancer cells in team effort with everyone pulling together. Infirmary blood Everyone who has played their part, large or • Enhance a dedicated children’s waiting area small, has made an important contribution at the NCCC and should be very proud of their efforts. Thank you all. A Review of Our Fifth Year x128809_SBRF_p7_cg_x128809_SBRF_p7_cg 29/11/2013 13:43 Page 4 New Cancer Research Equipment Lady Elsie with Dr David Jamieson and Newcastle Building Society chief executive Jim Willens and the new ISx New technology funded by the Foundation The information the machine provides will be Newcastle Building will provide an insight into how cancers vital to scientists who are studying whether Society Support spread around the body and how changes in the number CTCs are a predictor of how well a patient may respond to treatment. effectively new treatments are working. Two special charity-linked accounts, which If so, they will be able to identify which The ImageStream Imaging Flow Cytometer, proved to be the Newcastle Building patients will benefit from particular treatments. called an ImagestreamX (ISx), allows scientists Society’s most popular of the year, raised to see cancer cells that may be circulating in Dr David Jamieson, research associate at the hundreds of thousands of pounds for the a patient’s blood and is able to analyse up to Northern Institute for Cancer Research, says: Foundation. As of September 2013, a total 4,000 individual cells a second. “We’re all so pleased to have this new Imaging of £500,000 has been generated for the Flow Cytometer. It will make an enormous charity. The ISx cost £438,000 and is housed in difference to our work and we’re very grateful The Society pays an additional percentage on Ne wcastle University’s Northern Institute for to the Foundation’s supporters for making it all balances held in the accounts to the Sir Cancer Research. happen. Bobby Robson Foundation and it is the The ISx works like a microscope taking high “Many of the drug trials at the Sir Bobby c harity’s first financial partnership of this quality fluorescent images after cancerous cells Robson Centre are being used in patients for nature. in a blood sample are tagged with a the first time and new drugs ar e designed to fluorescent marker. Researchers can then work in a specific way in tumour cells. We identify cancerous cells that may have become want to use CTCs, rather than white blood cells separated from a tumour so they can study or normal skin cells, to work out whether the whether they are responsible for the spread of drugs are working as predicted. cancer around the body. “The ISx has many other important uses too. It will primarily he lp with the drug trials being As well as the detection of CTCs, it will be undertaken in the Sir Bobby Robson Centre very useful to leukaemia researchers as well and is the first ISx in the UK purchased as in many areas of laboratory preclinical specifically to detect and characterise tumour research. cells as they travel around the body in the “It can collect pictures of tens of thous ands of blood stream. Known as Circulating Tumour cells with up to 10 different proteins stained Cells (CTCs), they are incredibly rare. A typical with fluorescent antibodies. Crucially, this blood sample contains approximately 60 million means very small changes in cells can be white blood cells, 50 billion red blood cells and observed. as few as five CTCs. “For example, a drug may be expected to result There is growing evidence that the presence of in the movement of a protein from the five CTCs is associated with a worse prognosis cytoplasm to the nucleus and the images from The Newcastle's chief executive Jim Willens and for the patient so their detection is important. the ISx will allow us to see these changes.” Lady Elsie in the Sir Bobby Robson Centre x128809_SBRF_p7_cg_x128809_SBRF_p7_cg 29/11/2013 13:43 Page 5 The Sir Bobby Robson Foundation New Cancer Patient Ambulance PET Tracer Production Unit The Sir Bobby Robson Foundation has teamed up with another charity, Daft as a Brush, Cancer Patient Care, to jointly fund a Lady Elsie with Professor Herbie Newell in the PET Tracer Production Unit at new patient ambulance. Newcastle University Lady Elsie was very proud to officially open the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation PET Tracer Production Unit at Newcastle University. Pupils from High Spen Primary School ‘adopted’ the ambulance The unit, and the new equipment it houses, an Advanced Biomarker Technology ultra-compact cyclotron, was jointly funded by the University The ambulance will transport patients to use services at the Northern and the Foundation and is the first of its type in Europe and only the Centre for Cancer Care. second in the world. It is one of a fleet of 13 Daft as a Brush ambulances and has been It will help with the diagnosis and treatment of cancer and other serious ‘adopte d’ by pupils at High Spen Primary School in County Durham diseases and its purchase was only possible thanks to a contribution of who named it ‘Reach for the Stars.’ £625,000 from the Foundation. Lady Elsie and Brian Burnie, Daft as a Brush Trustee, visited the school to The Biomarker Generator works by creating radioactive tracers which thank the pupils for their support and enthusiasm. It was also a chance are given to patients who subsequently undergo scans to provide for everyone to see the new ambulance, which features artwork by information on cancer and other diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Marianne Murphy, aged 9, a Year 4 pupil at the school. Parkinson’s. The information collected helps doctors to understand the location of th e disease in each patient, how serious it is, and the Brian said: “It was a very pleasant an d moving day in the sun. underlying processes and pathways that are causing the illness.

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