Message from the Chair

First, as ever, thank you to all our fund-raisers who have been doing a range of things from local fun-runs to multiple marathons in the Falklands and a planned epic Jungle Adventure! You can read more about some of these exploits in our Newsletter.

Welcome to Tony Heddon as a corporate fund-raising Trustee, and also Deputy Chair. Tony has lots of energy to give, having retired early from a career in recruitment, and I’m sure you will be hearing more about what he has been doing in subsequent Newsletters. Tony has already represented us at the NICE appraisal of the anti-GD2 immunotherapy drug Dinutuximab beta for which he was very well prepared. You can read his report of this meeting in our Newsletter. Tony adds to our dynamic marketing and fund-raising team of Monica Proctor, Faye Watts, Jane Morris and a number of very helpful volunteers.

Huge thanks to Gemma Waterhouse and Ben Sharp, Treasurer and fund-raising Trustee, who are standing down after some 2 and 6 years respectively.  Gemma has brought our financial accounting into the 21st century and will be difficult to replace. Ben has been our liaison with fund-raisers throughout the land. Remarkably, Ben became a Trustee while his son was still undergoing treatment, sadly a battle he lost. Ben continued as Trustee and threw his energy into helping fund-raisers, but has now decided to move on and go back to work. We wish him all the best whilst hoping that he won’t disappear completely.

If you have some spare capacity in your week and would like to help make a difference through NBUK, please contact Shirley our Secretary. We are always looking for volunteers so that we can continue to improve what we do. We are also looking for someone to fulfil the Treasurer role – please encourage appropriate candidates to apply.

Trustee Steve Smith attended the recent SIOPEN AGM meeting in Berlin, at which Germany and The Netherlands were officially sworn in as SIOPEN members. The Berlin SIOPEN meeting started with a research symposium, so our next Neuroblastoma Research Symposium will be held in the Spring of 2019, in Cambridge. We are also changing the time of year of our biennial grant round. The deadline for our next grant round will be 30th September 2018, for awards early in 2019. Details will go up on the Research page of our website soon.

Guy Blanchard