Charity riders back in the saddle to raise awareness and money for Ovarian Cancer

date: 20^th August 2012

embargo: calling note

On the 6^th and 7^th September a group of seven charity riders will be donning their lycra (and sideburns) and hitting the road for an amazing 240 mile ride across Cumbria and the North East, navigating eleven cancer treatment hospitals in the northern region. The group will start in Whitehaven, on the west coast of Cumbria and finish at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead the following evening, visiting gynaecological oncology departments with a roadshow promoting ovarian cancer awareness and the Emma Gyles Bursary along the way.

The organisers and instigators of this amazing feat are Professor Richard Edmondson, Professor of Gynaecological Oncology at the Northern Institute of Cancer research in Newcastle and Ken Gyles, father of Emma Gyles who died in 2008 aged just 24 of ovarian cancer. The Bursary was set up in Emma's memory to help fund research into ovarian cancer and its aim is to raise £10,000 a year to fund a full-time medical student to work on the research alongside Professor Edmondson and his team.

Also lending their pedal power to the cause are Kevin Rowan, Northern TUC Regional Secretary, Maddie Moat, the 2012-13 recipient of the Emma Gyles Bursary, Dr Kathy Gillies and Alex Rodgers, a fellow TUC member of staff who also recently completed the Coast to Coast ride for the charity.

To donate or for more information on the Emma Gyles Bursary fund please follow the link to www.justgiving.com/kengyles

Locally, there are over 200 cases of ovarian cancer diagnosed each year in the North of England Cancer Network, an area covering from Whitehaven in the West to Middlesbrough in the East and up to the Scottish border. Patients are treated surgically at the Northern Gynaecological Oncology Centre in Gateshead and James Cook hospital in Middlesbrough and can then receive chemotherapy in a number of hospitals throughout the region. The North of England Cancer Network has one of the best survival rates in the country (data from National Cancer Intelligence Network) but there is still much work to do.

Treatment is getting better with improvements in surgery and the development of new chemotherapy drugs, including a new type of drug called a PARP inhibitor which was developed in Newcastle. This is now showing promising results in clinical trials.

For more information on the research group, please visit the website:

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/nicr/research/sttd/ovarian.htm

NOTES TO EDITORS:

Hospital visits:

Day 1 - Whitehaven, Carlisle, Middlesbrough,

Day 2 - Darlington, Durham, Sunderland, South Tyneside, North Tyneside, Freeman and Queen Elizabeth Gateshead

A full timetable of the visits will also be available prior to the start date detailing which hospitals will be visited and the timings.

Quotes are available upon request and/or will be issued in a follow-up release.

Ovarian cancer awareness

Although ovarian cancer is commonly called a silent killer in fact many patients do have symptoms but don't recognise them as being important. Common symptoms to look out for are:

Persistent pelvic or abdominal pain (that's your tummy button and below)

Increased abdominal size/persistent bloating - not bloating that comes and goes

Difficulty eating or feeling full quickly

Urinary symptoms (needing to wee more urgently or more often than usual)

It is important to remember however that in most cases these symptoms are only serious if they are frequent, persistent and new

Previous bursary holders

This year's holder of the bursary was Miss Anna Grundy. Anna carried out a project developing methods to isolate ovarian cancer cells in order to be able to test them to see whether the cancer will respond to new drugs called PARP inhibitors. She was successful in being able to isolate cells and test them in under 5 days whereas previously this had taken 15 days. This is really important in being able to deliver treatments quickly to patients. The importance of her work has already been recognised and she is due to present her findings at the National Cancer Research Institute meeting in Liverpool this December.

Anna said 'I am immensely grateful for the fantastic opportunity to carry out a research project in ovarian cancer. Working with the ovarian cancer research group has been incredibly rewarding and has encouraged me to pursue my interest in the speciality of oncology. I now have a greater appreciation of the challenges faced by individuals with ovarian cancer and feel honoured to have contributed towards the development of better treatments for these patients.'

Next year (2012/2013) the bursary has been awarded to Maddie Moat who will be taking over the work started by Anna.

Current research aims in Newcastle/Gateshead

The ovarian research group is a team of scientists and doctors based at the Northern Gynaecological Oncology Centre in Gateshead and Newcastle University. The group is led by Prof Richard Edmondson and carries out research to try and identify the best treatment for each patient. The aim of the research is to enable patients to receive the best treatment for them at the best time - a concept called personalised medicine.

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Media contacts:

Kevin Rowan, Northern TUC Regional Secretary T: 0191 227 5565; M: 07766250074; E: krowan@tuc.org.uk