Liverpool Half Marathon 17 March 2013

In 2012 Dominic Nutt – Glenda’s husband and Gareth’s brother-in-law – was diagnosed with neuroendocrine tumour. You can read about his story here.

We decided we wanted to do something to help.

Gareth Cooper in training

So on 17 March 2013, we will both be running the Liverpool Half Marathon in aid of iCancer. We want to raise as much money as possible – so please sponsor us using the donation buttons on the side of the page.

Once you have donated leave a comment for Glenda and Gareth below.

Dom has been really lucky – he’s had excellent care at St George’s Hospital, London. We wanted to say thank you for that, and raise mone . At present there isn’t a cure for neuroendocrine tumour, apart from surgery and it doesn’t respond to chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Also because it is relatively rare, it doesn’t attract the same type of funding as better known cancers.

Sponsoring us is simple, fast and totally secure. It’s also the most efficient way to sponsor us as iCancer will receive your money faster.

Spicing it up

‘Anyone who knows the Coopers knows we are pretty competitive,’ says Glenda, ‘so to add a bit of spice to the run – and to make sure I get out training in this cold weather, I’ve decided to do the following…

‘For every minute that I run the race either over or under 2 hours, I’ll add 1% of the sponsorship money I raise

‘Gareth has said he’ll do 2%!  he’s trying to make me run even harder….!

‘So get out there and sponsor us – and make sure you let us know in the comments below how much you’ve given.

‘We have partnered with a US and UK charity to enable people to  a make a tax-free donation and, if you are a UK taxpayer, an extra 28% in tax can be added to your gift at no cost to you through Gift Aid.

‘We’ll be tweeting updates at @glendacooper and @GCoops83 and updating the iCancer Facebook page.’

Today (February 14th 2013) our crowdfunding campaign comes to an end and we’re really excited to announce that the combined donations through both indiegogo and direct donations to the University we have reached a total of $258, 508.

We simply cannot thank you enough.

We haven’t reached our goal yet – but even though the crowdfunding campaign has come to an end our campaign to raise the money hasn’t.

We have been working hard behind the scenes and we are now able to channel donations through two charity organizations. The American Friends of Uppsala University in the US and the Anglo-Swedish Society in the UK. This will give  US and UK tax payers the possibility to receive tax deductions when donating to the campaign.

So what happens next? And what happens to the money raised so far? Prof Magnus Essand, virus creator from Uppsala University has answered all your questions below.

What will happen to the money raised so far?
Since iCancer was launched, so far we have raised an incredible $258, 508 via indiegogo and direct to the university.

We intend to use the money for a phase I clinical trial for patients with neuroendocrine tumours (NETs) using our neuroendocrine-specific virus.

We have drawn up a detailed budget and worked out we will need approximately £1,500,000 to be able to produce and test a clinical grade batch of the virus and perform a clinical trial for 20 NET patients.

The amount we have raised through crowd funding is fantastic and we are currently discussing with a potential donor to “fill in” what is missing to reach 1.5 million British Pounds.

We have also discussions with two other persons who might contribute larger amounts of money to the campaign. Please watch the iCancer website for more developments as soon as we can announce them…

The money raised so far is not enough for a clinical trial. What are you doing to further raise the funds?
We are channelling donations through two charity organizations (the American Friends of Uppsala University in the US and the Anglo-Swedish Society in the UK) in order to give US and UK tax payers the possibility to receive tax deductions when donating to the campaign.

We are planning a big event in London on the 5th March at the Swedish Embassy to further promote the campaign to donors.

We are also really pleased to announce that lots of people are still holding fundraising events to do all they can to raise money for iCancer.

What will happen if the funds are never raised?
We are confident that we can raise the funds. We have set ourselves the goal to raise the money needed during the entire year of 2013. The money will be kept in a secure account and will not be touched until we have obtained sufficient funding to go ahead with the clinical trial.

If for some reason we are not able to reach the goal and not get sufficient funding to conduct a phase I clinical trial, the money will still be spent on research for neuroendocrine tumors aiming at reaching benefits for NET patients. The main objective within this research program at Uppsala University is to develop new treatments for neuroendocrine cancer based on virotherapy and immunotherapy.

Finally…we want to say thank you
On behalf of all the iCancer team, and our team at Uppsala we want to say how inspired and touched we have been by the very generous donations that so many people have given.

From £5 to £5,000, every donation has made a difference. There’s been no budget, no rock concert, no celebrities like you usually see in fundraising – but this amazing amount has come in just by ordinary people giving money themselves and asking their friends.

This has not only raised a staggering amount so far -and has made it possible for us to go to other places for donations as a result.

We can’t say thank you enough.

We look forward to updating you on the work that we are doing to try to combat NETs – and to let you know about the trials.

Watch this space!

The Telegraph: The virus that kills cancer: the cure waiting in the cold.

The Telegraph: The cancer killer they won’t pay for

The Telegraph: Author appeals to Apple to fund cancer hope that could have save Steve Jobs.

The Telegraph: Dominic Nutt asks, ‘What price a life

The Irish Independent: A cheap and effective cancer treatment: so why is it sitting in a freezer in Sweden?

BBC Radio 4: Today programme debate with Magnus Essand. Saturday 1st September. (Sadly the link is now dead).

The Financial Times: Scientists offer to name cancer drug for 1 million (you need a subscription to read this)

The Financial Times: Science goes viral.

Macworld: Appeal for Apple to fund research into cancer that killed Steve Jobs.

Businessweek: Author tries raising money for cancer cure.

Mashable: iCancer Takes On Disease That Killed Steve Jobs

The Guardian: Blog: iCancer: closing the net around cancer by getting the public involved

Third Sector: Digital campaign of the week.

The Yorkshire Post: Cancer campaigners go viral.

The Metro: the UK’s daily newspaper.

The Drum: iCancer campaign aims to raise £2 million for cure to NET cancer which killed Steve Jobs

The Drum: As guerrilla iCancer campaign launches on anniversary of Steve Jobs death founding members speak with The Drum

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-338Z6gVE4

Pharmaceutical companies are interested in research only when it looks likely it will produce a profit. This research is some years away from that at this stage. Not only that, the Swedish research team placed much of their research in to the public domain, in order to help others with their research.

This act of altruism has meant that the Swedish team is unable to patent their research. This, in turn, means that pharmaceutical companies cannot guarantee that they alone will own the research at this stage and therefore profit from it.

Only when it has been trialled and developed further, can a new set of patents be applied – giving a drugs company sole ownership of the product, and a guaranteed profit.

The Swedish team has received grants from Swedish government funding and the Swedish Cancer Society (equivalent to Cancer Research UK). The grants cover the research to develop viruses for therapy but they are not big enough to run clinical trials with an advanced medicinal product where special rules apply (viruses falls under this category in Europe).

Please also read our full FAQ

Having completed a PhD at the Hammersmith Hospital in London, he continued post-doctoral research at the Mayo Clinic, Minnesota, USA before returning to the UK in 2000.

He currently combines a clinical practice treating melanoma with chemotherapy, radiotherapy and biotherapies, with a laboratory-based pre-clinical and clinical research programme focused on novel immune effector cells and oncolytic viruses for the treatment of cancer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwNyGxvTfiY

Please also read our full FAQ

Virus creator Professor Justyna Leja has produced this blog post, including links to the published papers, on her research.

By Prof Justyna Leja

My research focuses on development of new cancer therapies, where viruses are used as a novel anti-cancer drugs.

I did my four-year PhD studies under supervision of Prof. Magnus Essand and my work resulted in the development of what is known as an adenovirus that can specifically kill neuroendocrine cancer cells.

We have published four articles where we describe various ways of controlling and modifying the virus to kill cancer cells, leaving normal cells unharmed. Paper I describes the modification of viral DNA to make it multiply to kill only neuroendocrine cancer cells.

In paper II we describe how we protect normal, non-cancerous, cells from the virus. In papers III and IV we demonstrate how we modified the virus’ surface to improve its ability to infect and spread in tumours.

Our virus has a good efficacy in killing neuroendocrine tumours (NET) in mice. Our hopes are that this treatment will have significant effects for NET patients as well. The only way to find out if our virus can help cancer patients is to perform a clinical trial and to do so we need support from public.

PAPER I

A novel chromogranin-A promoter-driven oncolytic adenovirus for midgut carcinoid therapy.

Leja J, Dzojic H, Gustafson E, Oberg K, Giandomenico V, Essand M.

Clin Cancer Res. 2007 Apr 15;13(8):2455-62.

PAPER II

Double-detargeted oncolytic adenovirus shows replication arrest in liver cells and retains neuroendocrine cell killing ability.

Leja J, Nilsson B, Yu D, Gustafson E, Akerström G, Oberg K, Giandomenico V, Essand M.

PAPER III

Adenovirus with hexon Tat-protein transduction domain modification exhibits increased therapeutic effect in experimental neuroblastoma and neuroendocrine tumors.

Yu D, Jin C, Leja J, Majdalani N, Nilsson B, Eriksson F, Essand M.

J Virol. 2011 Dec;85(24):13114-23. Epub 2011 Sep 28.

PAPER IV

Oncolytic adenovirus modified with somatostatin motifs for selective infection of neuroendocrine tumor cells.

Leja J, Yu D, Nilsson B, Gedda L, Zieba A, Hakkarainen T, Åkerström G, Öberg K, Giandomenico V, Essand M.

Gene Ther. 2011 Nov;18(11):1052-62. doi: 10.1038/gt.2011.54. Epub 2011 Apr 14.

Please also read our full FAQ