Ollie's Star was set up by Mark Lovis, a Senior Engineer at our Redhill office, and his wife in memory of their late son who was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma - a cancer of soft tissue.

"In 2011 our first child, Ollie, was born. An exciting and wonderful time for us as a new family took a terrifying turn when, at 2 years old, our little boy presented some worrying symptoms and, after having a scan of his head, we were informed that he had a large growth within his skull. A few weeks later we were to be informed that he had Rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare form of cancer. We later found that the treatment protocol had not changed since the 1970s due to the poor funding available for children's cancer research.

Ollie sadly died aged 4 despite the chemotherapy, a 3-month trip to Florida for Proton Beam Therapy and numerous, rather traumatic, operations." Mark Lovis

Whereas adult cancer treatments have pushed on with leaps and bounds, children are often still subjected to somewhat more brutal forms of chemotherapy with comparatively few trials of new treatments. Thanks to the generous donations of family and friends, Ollie's Star has raised over £40,000 some of which has been used for a targeted trial by the experts at the CCLG already.