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Invest in ME are pleased to announce that our research fund total has now passed the £400,000 mark - and currently stands at £407,000.
This latest milestone has been helped by a wonderful donation of £10,000 which the charity has just received from a donor who will remain anonymous.
We would like to thank the donor for this extremely generous act of support and faith in the charity and its research strategy.
IiME initiated the UK rituximab trial project in July 2013 following the IIMEC8 annual conference and following a year of effort to establish this research in the UK.
The preliminary B-cell study was set up as a precursor to the trial in order to attempt to find likely responders to the drug and to confirm the results of previous B cell findings and checking whether two different clinics identify similar patients.
This is important work as it is crucial to try to find some ways of identifying patients that respond to rituximab and also why some do not.
Following discussions with the UCL researchers it was decided to fund further B-cell research with Dr Jo Cambridge and Dr Amolak Bansal, an immunologist at Epsom and St Helier Hospital, and with Fane Mensah - who has been involved from the start of the UK rituximab trial project in the preliminary B-cell study.
Dr Cambridge and Fane will soon visit the Norwegian Haukeland University hospital researchers - Dr Oystein Fluge and Professor Olav Mella - in Bergen where they will continue the collaboration that has been going on for a very long time - ever since IiME brought them together in the IIME research colloquiums and conferences.
This also is a result of the IiME strategy, implemented now over many years, to bring international biomedical research to ME.
We wish to thank all supporters of IiME's efforts to establish a strategy of high quality biomedical research in the UK and Europe.
And to the Hendrie Foundation who have pledged enormous support for the project. which is enabling people with ME to hold out hope for a better future based on proper research.
Invest in ME Research - The Future
The IiME strategy of uncompromisingly concentrating on a strategy of high-quality biomedical research based on international collaboration is showing itself to be the correct way forward.
This strategy has also included bringing in new experience from different disciplines to enable a more experience to be applied.
The charity now has underway probably the two most important research projects for ME in the UK/Europe.
The charity has also encouraged and funded students to participate in research into ME.
By always offering heavily subsidised tickets to students to attend the IiME conferences and, in the past years, supporting placements of medical students in the research projects we are funding, the charity has long committed itself to the education of medical students about ME.
These placements actively involve students in ME research – and have seen them working with Professor Angela Vincent at Oxford University and with Professor Maureen Hanson at Cornell University in New York.
We will continue to support this initiative established by IiME.
The charity's proposal for a centre of excellence for ME is forming [6] and new ideas are being discussed.
The charity has arranged a European collaboration of ME researchers - EMERG - The European ME Research Groupv[7]. This group will hold its inaugural meeting in London soon. This will create a European bloc of researchers who will be able to form pan-European research projects which will attract funding, awareness and influence policy makers.
The charity continues its annual research colloquium and conference. IIMEC11 and BRMEC6 have been announced for June 2016 [5].
The charity is also a member of the Europeam ME Alliance - a grouping of thirteen European countries' patient groups/charities.
These initiatives by the charity, in cooperation with our research institute partners, build awareness and create the next generation of ME researchers and clinicians and projects.
Thanks also to the innovative, tireless and visionary Let's Do It For ME team, who continue to amaze with their positive campaigning, it is abundantly clear that patients and carers are forcing establishment organisations and individuals to act and treat ME more seriously.
Yet we do not believe it would be prudent to have faith in the establishment organisations really changing things.
We therefore invite support for the charity to ensure that the urgency and importance that IiME apply to ME research and awareness is maintained so that we can bring rapid change in research, development of treatments and change in how ME is viewed.
Please help us by supporting our continuing efforts.
Fundraising's UK Rituximab Clinical Trial and B-cell Research
References
1. Haukeland Phase II rituximab clinical trial
2. ME/CFS – Through The Eyes of a Young Researcher
3. Progress of the B-cell Research Project
4. IiME Announce New Target for B-Cell PhD Studentship
5. IIMEC11 and BRMEC6
6. The IiME Proposal for a Centre of Excellence for ME
7. The European ME Research Group
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