Liège2London: The final rattle of the tin

312 miles ridden, 11,755 feet climbed, 9,939 calories burnt, 21 hours 10minutes
50seconds in the saddle. As a group: 46 wheels, 3 punctures, 5 offs (2 being
me), 1 broken collarbone (not me: Big Willie who came all the way from NYC), 1
in the van of heroes (Big Willie), and nobody in the van of shame.

So far £71,861.63 raised for Guy’s Cancer Centre.

To all my supporters near and far who have contributed Pounds, Euros, and Dollars:
US and Aussie: sincerely thank you. Your generous donations will make a huge
difference to funding two research fellows who are investigating immunotherapy
and a research project into bladder cancer in conjunction with colleagues in
Europe, America and Australia. I have attached the specific details of the two
projects at the foot of this post.

I’m 9th on the leaderboard with £2,570.18 raised from 51 supporters. That’s
terrific for my site being up for merely 10 days. But you know, I have had
hundreds of views and likes of my posts on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I
get it, we’re all bombarded with charity requests so frequently, but please do
click on the link to donate. However small your donation it will all go
directly to the Guy’s Fellows.

I was asked by fellow rider and leader of stage 1 drug trials, Professor Spicer,
why I put myself through this challenge. Well it’s because I’m in awe of all
the other riders:

Those curious, intelligent, caring people who have dedicated their lives to making a
massive difference to humankind;

Those survivors I rode with: Gary, Mark and Diarmuid who have had the mental and
physical fortitude to dig in, to go through mental, emotional and physical
hell;

For all their families who took the hard journey of shock, sorrow, sacrifice
and the helplessness of seeing their loved ones go through all that trauma;

And all the other bonkers people who love them all enough to commit to grinding out
three days of cycling through beautiful countryside, moving monuments, crazy
cobbled climbs to throw in whatever skills and enthusiasm you have to support
the cause. Just ace!

And of course, my Dad was treated for something similar 18 months ago.

All I had to do was rock up and act the goat and bounce of the ground a couple of
times!

The other thing as that I, and all of you, can actually visit, talk to, and even
touch those good folk who are doing all the really good work at Guy’s Cancer
Centre. They are all friendly and won’t bite, albeit they wanted to zap me with
radiotherapy for a graze and bruise to my arm from the first of my tumbles in
Kent!

Love to you all.

Mark
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1. Tumour immunology fellow

Immunotherapy is a promising new treatment for many cancer types and the first funded Fellow will focus their efforts in extending the reach of this treatment to more
people. In the Urology field it is effective for kidney, bladder and prostate
cancer. Not all patients respond to these treatments so work needs to be done
to:

1. Find ways to predict who will respond, to save putting patients on treatments
that won't help them. 2. Find new immunotherapy treatments for the patients who
don't respond to current therapies. 3. Enhance immunotherapy responses whilst
milting side effects.

This will improve patient quality of life, as well as extend life expectancy for
patients with incurable diseases. A future goal would be to improve cure rates
by using immunotherapy in combination with surgery / radiotherapy.

2. Urology fellow

The second fellow will lead a project looking at whether directing chemotherapy to
the bladder can reduce the number of patients developing bladder cancer after
receiving successful treatment for a similar cancer in the kidney.

As soon as positive research findings emerge, our healthcare staff can put these
new methods into practice, to ensure patients benefit from the new learning
straight away.