Spring 2008 Newsletter

Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to the Spring 2008 edition of the BACR Newsletter.

The BACR continues to expand its programme of focussed conferences and to support its members to attend other meetings. Competition for BACR awards continues to increase and the committee has had to work hard to support as many individuals as possible. During the year the BACR has provided in excess of £37K in support of both student (27 awards) and full members (13 awards) to attend meetings and 4 Travel Exchange Fellowships were awarded.

This issue also includes reports of the BACR Special Conferences: ‘Diet & Cancer: susceptibility, prevention and therapy - June 2007, and ‘Cell signalling and novel cancer therapeutics, November 2007.

The BACR also sponsored a number of meetings during the year:

• Nottingham Summer School and Symposium June 2007 ! Mucins in Health and Disease (9th International Workshop on Carcinoma-associated Mucins) Cambridge, July 2007
• Genes & Cancer Meeting, Warwick, December 2007
• Metabre/BRECOSM, Rome, December 2007
• Life Sciences, Glasgow, July 2007

Topics for 2008 BACR Special Conferences are:

• Cellular immortality & cancer: from telomerase to cancer stem cells to be held in Stratford-upon-Avon on 3rd & 4th June, 2008
• Advances in Cancer Drug Discovery to be held in Cambridge on 7th/9th September, 2008
• BACR/RSM Oncology Section/APS meeting Pre-clinical models; biomarkers and targeted therapy to be held in London on 27th November, 2008.

Any member having a proposal for a Special Conference should submit details including a rationale for the subject directly to Barbara Cavilla at the Secretariat (b.cavilla@icr.ac.uk).

The 3rd NCRI Cancer Conference continues to be a successful meeting, bringing together laboratory and clinical cancer researchers, with over 1,700 delegates and a wide range of diverse sessions. Once again, the BACR was involved and ran two educational workshops, one on RNAi technologies and the other on Apoptosis which were both well attended despite the early start. A BACR reception for members was also well attended and it is anticipated that this event will run again this year. Plans are already under way for two BACR Educational workshops to be presented at the 4th Annual NCRI Cancer Conference 5th/8th October.

Proposals for these workshops are “Small animal imaging and models” and “Tissue microarrays and image analysis”.

We welcomed two new members to the Executive Committee at the AGM

• Stephen Hiscox (University of Cardiff)
• Steve Wedge (AZ, Macclesfield)

and Tomasz Zaremba (Newcastle) was elected as the student representative.

On behalf of the Executive, I would also like to express thanks to Moray Campbell and Michael Seckl, for their very valuable contributions to the Executive Committee and its sub-committees.

We would also like to give a huge vote of thanks to Dr Stewart Martin who has finally escaped from being Honorary Treasurer of the BACR. Stewart has worked tirelessly on behalf of the BACR to maximize our income and make sure the money was spent as effectively as possible.

All of us recognize that the Honorary Treasurer of the BACR is lot of work with minimal thanks and lots of complaints. However, we didn’t say that to Dr Andrew Westwell who has taken over as Honorary Treasurer

In 2010 the BACR will have been supporting and promoting cancer research for 50 years. The Executive Committee is discussing events in 2010 to celebrate the past and future of the BACR and British cancer research. We would be keen to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

Robert Brown, Chairman