In 2003, Geoff Thomas, the ex-England and Crystal Palace footballer, was diagnosed with leukaemia. A bone marrow transplant from his sister saved his life. Other blood cancer sufferers aren’t so lucky. They need new state-of-the-art drugs to save their lives and that’s where the Geoff Thomas Foundation is trying to help.
The UK is the world leader in medical research and the aim of the Geoff Thomas Foundation is to get that research from the scientist’s lab bench to the patient’s hospital bedside.
Billions of pounds have been spent on medical research and scientists have invented a host of potentially life-saving therapies. But getting them to the patients who need them is a slow process. The Foundation wants to help speed up the delivery of these new drugs to the patients who need them.
We don’t want these new drugs to sit on a shelf in a laboratory. If you invented the computer – you wouldn’t keep it in the warehouse. If you created the jumbo jet – you wouldn’t keep it in the aircraft hangar.
Our plan is to raise £20 million over five years to fund an integrated network of leukaemia drugs trials at six world class centres – in Oxford, Cambridge, Bart’s London, Birmingham, Nottingham and Manchester.
This project could harness £50 million pounds worth of free blood cancer drugs for the NHS, it will create hundreds of jobs in the biotech economy and will provide a world class model for the treatment of not just leukaemia – but all other cancers.
Most importantly, our scheme will help save lives and increase the availability of life-changing drug therapies for blood cancer. We have the magic bullets to zap leukaemia – they’re just not hitting their target yet.
www.geoffthomasfoundation.com