Hello everyone, thank you for taking the time to visit our JustGiving page. We are hoping to raise enough money to fund a PhD student researching Triple Negative Breast Cancer.

In December 2014, our beloved mother, Suzie Mackie was diagnosed with oestrogen driven breast cancer and after a year of treatment which included a lumpectomy, chemotherapy and radiotherapy Mum's life seemed as if it were back on track. However, the dreaded cancer returned in November 2017 and Mum was given just a few months to live unless it were treated radically there and then. Mum went on to have five different cancer treatments and tolerated them all with such strength and grace.

In September 2020, after fighting for five years the cancers had spread too far and Mum made the brave decision to stop further invasive and complicated treatments and returned home.

Mum died on October the 5th. In her final weeks, she was surrounded by family, friends, love, laughter and we were all by her side until the end.

Mum dedicated her life to teaching and helping students from all around the world and before she died, Mum came up with the idea to raise enough money to fund a PhD student that was researching and trying to find a cure for the cancer that finally took her life. Mum's amazing Oncologist Dr Tim Crook agreed to match whatever total we managed to raise. 

The John Fulcher Neuro-oncology Laboratory was established by the Brain Tumour Research Campaign (BTRC) to study molecular pathways in brain tumour cells, which were collected from brain tumour patients at Charing Cross – working with live brain tumour tissue, the scientists identify metabolic pathways which can alter (and therefore slow or stop) the growth of cancer cells. Dr Nel Syed was initially funded by BTRC as a post-doctoral fellow in 2008 to start this work, - prior to that, she had worked with Dr Tim Crook at the Institute for Cancer Research on breast cancer and melanoma, and both have a passion for genetic and epigenetic research in these fields. They have found many synergies in the metabolic behaviour of all these tumours, but especially between GBMs (the most aggressive brain tumour) and Triple Negative breast cancer - and are able to learn from their behaviour to find treatments that benefit both primary and secondary brain tumours.

They have already undertaken some considerable work, performing RNA sequencing of breast cancer and normal breast to catalogue changes in gene expression. The first high yield results from this analysis have provided a detailed picture of the status of the renin-angiotensin system in early and advanced breast cancer pathogenesis. We believe we have identified a completely novel target in metastatic breast cancer with tremendous therapeutic potential.