Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page. I give brief details below about our Trek in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco and what we hope to achieve through your generosity. Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity. So it’s the most efficient way to donate – saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

AICR is an international charity supporting cancer research. Indeed my lab was fortunate to obtain a grant from them to compare and contrast usually benign tumours of the pituitary with usually very aggressive glioblastomas of the brain.  In particular we hope to understand how two specific genes we work with relate to the control of cell division in different ways in the two types of tumour - with the hope that we can eventually use this knowledge to stop tumours growing.

Thanks to the kindness of friends and colleagues I have now managed to raise the minimum of £1850 for AICR, which means that I can now definitely go on the Trek. This will cover the costs of my participation in the trek above what I have paid already, and give the charity some funds. However, I would like to raise a lot more than this. Indeed, I am now aiming for a minimum of £4000. The Team that will do the Trek is made up mostly of researchers, close supporters of AICR and a few of their staff members, and together we have an ambitious target of raising a minimum of £30,000 for the charity. But the more we raise, the more research we and other scientists can do to help understand and battle cancer.

I am going with a lab colleague, Karine, and together we have already put on two events at our Institute (the MRC National Institute for Medical Research in London), which have raised around £1600. This is thanks to the generosity of our colleagues at work and several individuals and vendors who have given items for raffle prizes, provided food and drink at a discount, provided music for free, and volunteered their help. The first was a Moroccan evening (see embarrassing photos of me with some of my lab members, including Karine, who is clearly in better shape than I am. The second was a French wine and cheese event that took place on 28 February – with further evidence in the second picture that I will do (almost) anything for AICR. 

The trek takes place over 6 days between 10th and 17th May, where the Team will cover a considerable distance and vertical height, with at least 1000 meters elevation each day. The most challenging part of the trip will be the dawn ascent of Mount Toubkal, North Africa’s highest peak that tops out at over 4,167 metres above sea level. This will be a little challenging physically, but what I am dreading most is having to get up at dawn, and the lack of showers en route.