Andie Shaw, PhD student writes…….

Everyone says life is short and you only live once, but an article written by a girl my age, who had sadly recently lost her fight with cancer, really hit home for me. She wrote about making the most of every opportunity put in front of her and never saying no, because she wasn’t sure if such opportunities would present themselves again in her lifetime. I immediately remembered an email I had received that very morning about doing a sky dive in aid of the CBTRC. I had always wanted to do a skydive, but never been brave (or crazy) enough! I thought to myself what a great opportunity, which will also allow me to raise some money for an extremely worthwhile cause. So I had 3 minutes of courage, and signed up!

When I woke up the following morning I thought to myself what have I done!! I was terrified of the skydive, but more so of not being able to raise the minimum £400. At the time, this felt like an impossible task. Little did I know the fundraising would be the least of my worries…

££ raising University cake sale, with Dawn Broomfield (CARO)

I teamed up with a few other jumpers and we held a cake sale in the students union, raising over £200. My dad held a cake sale at his work, emailing around his colleagues to ask for people to help bake and buy cakes. The turnout was amazing with baking donations ranging from cakes, biscuits and tarts, to homemade sausage rolls and samosas. They raised over £250, with his company making an additional donation of £75 boosting the total to £325 (Thank you to Atkins in Epsom, Surrey). My Nan and Grandad’s village (Caistor, Lincolnshire) have a ‘Walking for Health’ group who meet for regular coffee mornings. When it was my grandparent’s turn to host, they did so in aid of the CBTRC raising £100. On top of this, just sharing my story on social media generated more donations than I ever would have imagined. From friends and family, to people I didn’t know who just believed in the cause.

In total I raised over £1000, which led to me being the highest fundraiser for the Summer Solstice skydive – out of hundreds of jumpers across the UK! I couldn’t quite believe it, and felt almost guilty as it was so easy. I felt like I had hardly put any effort in to raising that amount! It is because of the amazing cause that everyone was so willing to help me and to donate such large amounts of money. It also helped that as I am a PhD student within the CBTRC, I could talk first-hand about the great things we do there.

Back to earth

The skydive was amazing, and I would encourage anyone to give it a go! However, the more important outcome of this experience is the development of a ‘CBTRC Student Fundraising Group’. In the hope that other students can be as successful as I was at raising money for the CBTRC, we have set up a student led project within the students union. This is currently made up of a few CBTRC PhD students; however, we envisage students from any background and members of the public getting involved in helping us hold successful fundraising events in the near future.

Anyone wanting to get involved or wanting to hold a fundraising event watch this space for us to go live on the student’s union website in a couple of weeks!

For any more information or to let me know of your interest please feel free to contact me

Thanks, Andie

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It was very nearly a clean sweep for Beth Coyle’s group from the CBTRC at the recent Cancer Research Nottingham 2018 annual symposium.

The symposium was held on the 19^th September this year and showcased the latest advances in cancer research. The symposium provided a platform for researchers, clinicians and industry representatives from around the world to come together and discuss high-quality research.

This insightful research meeting featured exciting presentations regarding novel treatment approaches and therapeutic targets in various cancer types. Examples included, the improved survival associated with intra-cavity surgical drug delivery in patients with malignant brain tumours (Mr Stuart Smith from the CBTRC) and advancements in the mechanisms of how prostate cancer cells grow and invade (Prof. Kevin Gaston Course Director of the new Cancer Sciences BSc).  There were three external speakers: Prof. Banafshe Larijana (University of the Basque Country, Spain) gave a fascinating overview of oncoprotein activation dynamics; Prof. Robert Clarke (Manchester Cancer Centre) highlighted the role of cancer stem cells and tumour microenvironment in breast cancer metastasis; and Prof Kevin Ryan (Beatson Inst., Glasgow) discussed the role of fucosylation as a p53 effector in cancer cells.

This year there was also an opportunity for PhD students and Post-Docs to enter their work into the Cancer Research Nottingham poster competition. The poster presentation consisted of a visual display of research findings combined with an interactive question and answer period with the judge. The posters most highly regarded by the judges were awarded voucher prizes.

This year three out of the four winners came from the CBTRC! The winner of the first year PhD student prize was CBTRC student Hannah Jackson, third year winner was CBTRC student Sophie Roper and the award for the best Post-doc poster prize was given to CBTRC post-doc Franziska Linke.

So a huge congratulations to our winners!

Congratulations to Hannah, Sophie and Franziska from Beth Coyle’s group (CBTRC) who won poster presentation prizes at Cancer Research Nottingham 2018. Photo credit: Macha Aldighieri

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Twice a year the CBTRC hold a research day to allow researchers to showcase their current work with other members of the team.

The CBTRC Autumn event took place in the Nottingham University main campus pharmacy building on the 18^th October 2018.

Second year PhD student Catherine Vasey presenting on next generation nanotherapeutics for neurosurgically applied tumour drug delivery. Photo credit: Hannah Jackson

This year the themes of the day included Molecular Neuro-Oncology, Drug delivery, Brain injury and Bioinformatics. We invited two guest speakers for the research day, Alan McIntyre, Assistant Professor of Cancer Biology, who focused on targeting the tumour hypoxic response as an anticancer therapy for hypoxic tumours.

The second invited speaker was University Academic Fellow, Lucy Stead from the University of Leeds, whose work focuses on investigating intratumour heterogeneity in Glioblastoma.

In between the two invited speakers we concentrated on presentations from numerous PhD students, Post-docs and technicians from the CBTRC. Each presenter had 20 minutes to present their research followed by a question and answer session from the audience.

The large range of topics, such as modelling medulloblastoma in 3D, sprayable drug delivery systems and targeting the immune system in relapsed ependymoma (plus many many more) created a very interactive atmosphere for discussion. We also had different chairs for each theme which gave additional helpful comments for each presenter.

Aside from the interesting academic programme, the organising committee also arranged a science themed bake-off to bring out everyone’s inner Mary Berry!

Fantastic cakes ranging from lab coats and periodic tables to beautiful butterfly gardens were submitted and expertly judged according to aesthetics and taste by all attendees. The star-baker of the day was the first year PhD student Louisa Taylor with her ‘Messy Lab Top Bench cake’. The judges loved her attention to detail and her delicious tasting cake!

Star baker Louisa Taylor with her winning cake and prize. Photo credit: Hannah Jackson

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Conferences, whether you are a student or a supervisor, provide a change from the lab and an exciting opportunity to learn more about the current research in your field. CBTRC researchers are fortunate to benefit from funds provided by Research Grants, the University and CBTRC donors to support us in attending these events. And, we want to make the most of the opportunity.

Hannah presenting her poster at ISEV 2018. Photo credit: Beth Coyle

However, the enthusiasm may begin to wear off when you have to deal with stressful poster printing, airport delays and 7:30am sunrise sessions! That’s why I have put together some tips on how I survived my first international conference.

Booking the conference

The cost of most conferences increase substantially as you get closer to the run up to the event, so make sure to book it as soon as possible to take advantage of the early bird registration fees.

Expect to be exhausted!

From the moment the conference starts it’s go, go, go!!!

Days were planned out from 8am until 8pm with barely any breaks. As this was my first big conference I was worried I would miss important sessions because several sessions overlapped, therefore I spent a lot of time before planning my itinerary so that I could attend as many sessions as possible. Looking back, I should have skipped a few sessions and enjoyed the Barcelona sunshine, as five days of constant science is overwhelming for the best of us!

Even if you have planned everything right, having time for lunch and making sure you get refreshments, doesn’t always work out. So, having small snack to hand, like a cereal bar (or two), will help keep you energy levels lasting all day.

Present something

Whether it’s a poster or a talk, make sure you bring something to present at a conference, because this will force you to talk to people. The thought of standing by my poster and presenting my work to experts in the field terrified me. I was so worried that my work wasn’t good enough, that I wouldn’t be able to answer questions or that people would be critical of me. However, by the time my poster session had finished (I actually ended up staying an extra 15mins after the poster session had ended as my poster had proved quite popular) I realised that all my worrying, stressing and skipping lunch had all been for nothing. The poster session was fine, people were very nice and gave me great feedback. It was also a really great confidence booster; having experts in the field be interested in your work gives you such an amazing lift.

Get some freebies (and meet companies developing the latest tech)

It is always important to make connections with companies developing the latest technologies in your field. New companies are always emerging, others are rapidly evolving and it’s almost impossible to stay on top of it all. This is the opportunity to meet companies on a personal level and build connections which may benefit you in the long-run. At ISEV 2018 industry booths were set up around the poster sessions, I stopped at booths run by Norgen and SBI who sequence small RNA-samples. It was important for me to discuss my project with them and see how they could help me, they also gave me lots of freebies, including a t-shirt and a water bottle!

Network, network, network

I know it’s extremely hard to resist the urge of hanging around with people you already know, but one of the most important reasons for going to a conference is to network. The people here are your potential future joint authors and research collaborators. Meeting people from other labs can help you make a more informed decision about what to do next and where to go in your career. It also provides you with the opportunity to learn about what other labs are doing and for other labs to get to know you; if you play your cards right one of these labs could be a future employer.

Also, go to the conference dinner, don’t expect the food to be great (I learnt the hard way that the Spanish don’t cater well for vegetarians!), but take the opportunity to mix with interesting people outside of the research environment.

Hannah Jackson is supported by the James Tudor Foundation, University of Nottingham Life Cycle 7, and the University of Nottingham School of Life Sciences.

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In this blog, Richard Grundy, Professor of Paediatric Neuro-Oncology at the Children’s Brain Tumour Research Centre, shares his insights into the importance and complexities of clinical trials involving children with brain tumours.

Having recently taken part in the filming for the BBC2 programme, Hospital, which featured a patient, who was accepted onto the SIOP PNET5 MB trial1 during filming, I am able to reflect on the complexity of enrolling children with brain tumours onto clinical trials, and the limitations of this current system for researchers.

© BBC Hospital

We have unique opportunities in the UK: near-universal treatment within a single healthcare system; internationally leading national cancer registration systems; an established CRUK funded national tissue bank through CCLG centres; a trials-driven professional workforce, a networked imaging database; and close, multidisciplinary integration at a national level between clinical trials, cancer intelligence and cancer service commissioning and delivery. Despite these advantages, childhood brain tumour survival, particularly for high-grade tumours, lags behind apparently similar European and US neighbours.

Rona McGill at Poppy’s bedside ©NottinghamPost

The child featured in the programme, Poppy, is one of the first 3 patients to have been enrolled onto the PNET5 trial in the UK. For Poppy to be able to be enrolled into the trial, it involved a huge multi-disciplinary effort from the staff in Nottingham Children’s Hospital. This included molecular profiling, (the biology of her tumour determines which trial arm she can access), surgical teams ensuring that adequate tissue during surgery is collected and frozen immediately, and detailed paperwork collected by the nursing team. Poppy drew the carboplatin arm. In this trial it is being used as a radiosensitiser to improve the effectiveness of radiotherapy. This has to be given between 1 and 3 hours before the chemotherapy, so for Poppy, who needed a general anaesthetic that has to be given at 08.30 every morning, this posed a logistical nightmare. The regional children’s cancer services worked incredibly well to make these nightmarish logistics happen for this family. A huge credit to the dedication and teamwork of our team at during an incredibly busy time within Nottingham Children’s Hospital and Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust.

During an incredibly busy time within Nottingham Children’s Hospital, the multi-disciplinary team involved was able to achieve a great opportunity for Poppy and her family. But, this is not the case for every patient. Presently, there is significant variation in neurosurgeons’ attitudes and practice of tumour storage for research in the UK14. Indeed only 50% of CNS tumours have tumour tissue frozen at diagnosis, which potentially prevents patient entry into a number of clinical trials which mandate this. However, things are improving. In the Ependymoma trial, which I am running, we have at least 80% of cases with fresh frozen tissue. The clinical trial is very carefully monitored and all new cases are discussed in our national Ependymoma Multi-disciplinary Advisory Group. This close scrutiny of cases has resulted in a significant improvement in the surgical resection rate of these tumours from 50% to 85%. As a complete surgical resection is one of the strongest predictive markers for a good outcome, we would hope that this will translate into better outcomes for Children with this, presently, very difficult to cure tumour. This highlights the value of national advisory groups in improving outcomes for childhood brain tumours.

To find out how Poppy’s treatment is progressing and her recovery, see her family’s website

You can watch clips from the episode on iplayer here

By Richard Grundy, Professor Paediatric Neuro-Oncology, Children’s Brain Tumour Research Centre

Picture: Alex Cantrill-Jones / ACJ Media

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