It was a win for Paul last night at the Stratford Town Hall at the 3rd of his white collar boxing events, this event was hosted in support of Headcase and we had 3 really good auction items which raised £660. Thank you to Peter Burnett and Ross Hayward of EdBroking and Alex Gray of Millers for their kind bids.

Do you remember you supported Headcase Charity a couple of years ago? You read the blog, you reposted the Facebook updates, you Liked the stories of injuries, training, diets, operations, results and best of all you donated as the months passed leading up to the pitching of aging bodies against the challenge of Ironman race. 
Can we call on you time and support, – and hopefully spare cash once again. We raised nearly £50k over 18 months, comprising a variety of events, auctions, culminating with the Ironman race in Nice. This enabled us to support a full time PhD researcher for a year to find a cure for GBM brain tumors. Still 100% fatal with average life sentence of 14 months, yet only gets 0.01% of total U.K. Charity fundraising to try and find a cure. 

It’s on again, 13th May 2017. Join the journey and support the efforts to raise funds again to continue the quest to find a cure. No money is taken in Administration fees, and it’s a real direct effect you will be having.

Your involvement in likeing, reposting, tweeting, commenting as well as donating will help the pain seem worthwhile. 

Read the story thus far on this blog.

Team Russell: Tony, Peter, David & Dan

How many days until… 161 days

How many weeks until… 23 weeks

How many months until… 5 months

How many hours until… 3864 hours

How many minutes until… 231840 minutes

How many seconds until… 13910400 seconds

Dubai international Half Ironman

Since 2012 the funds raised by all those who knew Colin or the extended family of friends who watched his diagnosis with GBM Brain cancer until his battle was finally lost in the summer of 2013 have supported raising over £45k (10%) of the funds quoted below.

Headcase Cancer Trust now raised in the region of £450,000 since we started in Oct 2010. They have just committed a further £67,000 to Portsmouth University taking their total investment there to £250,000! They have also just committed £95,000 to Nottingham Trent University

Portsmouth

More wizards doing wizardly things…..

OK the big news is that they are also funding a 3rd Research Project at Portsmouth University! That means the total investment at Portsmouth will be a few quid short of £1/4 million!! (BIG BIG thanks to all of YOU that have made this happen!)

This time we’re providing funding of approx £68,000 for a 2 year project entitled ‘Engineering Novel Endocrine Therapies for GBM’ (quite).

In Normal Person English (as opposed to Wizard speak) that translates to stretching nano-fibres to a width of around 1/1000th of a mm so they can pass through the Blood Brain Barrier (try saying that quickly!). This is really important as the BBB stops stuff getting to your brain, like drugs (weirdly it lets LSD through though… go figure).

What the Wizards will then be doing is attaching drugs to the nano-fibres so that they are pulled through the BBB quicker (important for some drugs as their potency runs out in minutes), and in greater quantity (important for other drugs as normal amounts, to have an effect, are poisonous to the rest of the body).

If successful, this will then allow said drugs to target the GBM specifically and inhibit its growth and stop it invading healthy brain tissue.

Sorcery indeed!

….. and before anyone says it attaching the drugs to LSD so it takes them through the BBB isn’t a sensible option!

Nottingham Trent

Wizards doing wizardly things……..

A chance internet search and phone call has led to Headcase providing funding of around £100,000 to the John van Geest Cancer Research Centre at Nottingham Trent University for a 3 year Research Project!

This is a potentially ground breaking project that if successful could lead to clinical trials within 5 years.

So what are they up to?……

Well it really is wizardly stuff…. they have already discovered an antigen protein present in GBM called HAGE (it’s also present in aggressive breast cancer). HAGE it would seem is a target for a potential vaccine against GBM i.e. the vaccine would stimulate the immune system to ‘kill’ the GBM.

There’s a lot of interest in ‘Immunotherapies’ and personalised medicines for cancer at the moment particularly as they are less toxic than existing therapies.  We’ll keep you updated on their progress.

Clomipramine Trial 

We’re awaiting results from test taking place at the University of Bergen, which if successful, will mean that we can start a 2 year trial of around 100 patients using Clomipramine. Current ad hoc evidence shows that Clomipramine extends survival time for GBM to years rather than months with a good quality of life. If the Norwegian tests are successful we hope to start the trial in June/July.

Did you think they’d go quietly?
So the last race of the season looms large. And what a difference 5 months makes. It was barely a month after completing the Mallorca that Tony suffered searing pain in his hip and soon after that the news it was arthritis. Not good if you use your hips regularly under pressure! The hope for GB qualification at Liverpool followed a no show at London to help conserve limbs. But it was not going to happen so focus was on Bala in September. If the trip to North Wales wasn’t a challenge enough the event was an immense challenge but even loaded up with painkillers the run was particularly nasty. Either way an impressive finish time and a 8th place, tantalisingly close but not good enough for a GB bib.

A gel sort of thing injection later and training was resumed… but still the pain. So with Dan always threatening Asthma attacks and also nursing a dodgy knee…. The inaugural Dubai Triathlon takes place on the 7th November and the boys are tooling up, health wavering but determined to put in good times.. or at least complete it.

It’s been a year of great highs with the whole Team Russell finishing their half Iron Man in Mallorca with Peter and David crossing the line together and the lows of injury and what could have been’s. But what they all want is to reach the end of this year with the magic £50k for Headcase.

So many have done their bit, Andy and his row, Kirstin abseiling down the Lloyd’s building and the Russells have expended huge levels of resilience and energy.

So if you can just dig into the piggy banks, down the back of the Sofa’s, bottom of handbags and sports lockers – just please help the journey end on a high for all those involved and for the research into this killer disease.

Dan: http://www.dubai-tri.com