Please help us support the 8th OSCAR Dragon Boat Race on Friday 15 September 2023.

This year the Baltic Exchange is entering two teams in this annual event and we’re anticipating a hotly fought competition after achieving 3^rd place in 2022! 

The Blues:
Mark Hubbard 
Nadia Mirza
Ian Roberton
Stephen Aitchison
Christia Christofi
Isabella Kurek-Smith
Renny Symonds
James Fleck
Janet Sykes
Alexander Senior (Sykes)

The Reds:
Steffan Lewis
Mark Ma
Anthony Zavos
Robin Doran
Rashad Issa
Mark Jackson
Jakob Kristoffersen
Alfie Booth

We would be incredibly grateful for your support for the OSCAR Campaign which has raised over £2.5 million for Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children (GOSH).  We’re aiming to raise a total of £10,000 and it would be great if you could make a donation, however large or small.

The Campaign is named after Oscar Parry, son of Spinnaker Chairman Phil Parry. Oscar had two different types of leukaemia. His life was saved by experimental treatments. He had two bone marrow transplants, the first ever childhood stem cell transplant in the UK, over 100 blood transfusions, five brain hemorrhages and five years of chemotherapy.

Thanks to the pioneering work of the bone marrow transplant team at GOSH, Oscar is now 24 and the shipping community is saving the lives of other children by supporting more and more new treatments for children with previously incurable diseases. 

Latest Developments:

The OSCAR Campaign is directing its fundraising towards CAR T cell therapy, which involves genetically engineering the patient's immune cells to fight against their specific leukaemia. This approach has been remarkably successful in patients with otherwise incurable leukaemia.

Sadly, while almost all patients respond initially, around half will relapse and this often because the patient loses circulating CAR T cells for reasons we don’t really understand. These patients currently have little chance of survival. 

The clinical team we're supporting need £2.5m to make new treatments a reality. More than £1.5m of funding is already committed. We want to get them across the line and save the lives of children who cannot currently be saved. 

The Baltic Exchange represents a global community of shipping interests with almost 5000 members. These include shipowners, charterers and shipbrokers who are collectively responsible for handling a large proportion of the world’s dry cargo and tanker fixtures, freight derivative trades as well as the sale and purchase of merchant vessels. Regulated by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). It is the trusted provider of data for the settlement of physical and derivative freight contracts, underpinning risk management tools for the shipping and transportation markets. 

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