Campaign Update
An ancient society looks to the future
Why I give to King’s
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IN TOUCH
spring 2013
julian anderson
From left, EMDP Co-Director Dr Alison Stenton and students Jermaine Wright and Kate Tew
Learn more about our campaign at kcl.ac.uk/ kingsanswers
many regularly graduating in the top 10 per cent of their year group. Outreach for Medicine is a natural fit for the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, whose members – like the Barbers’ Company – include doctors, pharmacists, dentists and veterinary surgeons. ‘The Society of Apothecaries has been involved in medical education and standard setting for nearly 400 years,’ says Dr Timothy Chambers OBE (KCSMD, Medicine, 1969), a former master apothecary. ‘It welcomed the opportunity to contribute to the Outreach for Medicine programme, which has enlarged access to undergraduate education in an imaginative and successful way, allowing young people to achieve more than they might have dreamed of.’ The Worshipful Society of Apothecaries has agreed to fund some
of the programme’s high-cost equipment needs for the coming year. This equipment is used in the interactive workshops to allow pupils to take turns in role-playing, carrying out key clinical skills such as taking blood pressure, taking blood samples using a prosthetic arm and stitching wounds using prosthetic suturing pads. Because the equipment gets used nearly every day, many expensive items need replacing by year’s end. ‘Our outreach scheme has been successful because of the wonderful support we have received from the Barbers, Apothecaries and other donors. The generosity of our donors inspires students in the programme and transforms their lives,’ says EMDP Co-Director Dr Alison Stenton (English, MA, 1998; PhD, 2004). To learn about supporting the Outreach for Medicine programme, please call +44 (0)20 7848 3407
Tim Palmer is a GP principal working in a large urban practice and a forensic physician for the Met and Kent Police. As a student, he says, ‘most of my social life revolved around sport, particularly the rugby club’.
I count myself lucky. As a student I did not have to rely on my parents for financial support while I was at Guy’s. I was supported completely by the Local Authority Grant and left Medical School as a doctor with no burgeoning student loans. Students today are under enormous financial pressure, with an extended training duration leading to heavy borrowing. It is reducing the opportunities for some groups of students. Universities should offer opportunities for people from all backgrounds to avail themselves of the opportunity for tertiary education. Unfortunately, there are many barriers for some worthy candidates, some of them social and some of them financial. Because of this, and knowing that there are many students now who face financial hardship, I felt that I could afford to make a small contribution to help those future students a little.
Widening participation The Worshipful Society of Apothecaries generously supports an innovative programme that aims to inspire talented pupils The 395-year-old Worshipful Society of Apothecaries is the latest venerable organisation to support King’s award-winning programme to introduce children from underperforming schools to possible careers in medicine. By contributing to the popular Outreach for Medicine programme, the society joins the programme’s principal sponsor, the Worshipful Company of Barbers, in helping thousands of young students realise they may well have the potential to become doctors. Thanks to its supporters, Outreach for Medicine is able to work with school children in more than 500 non-selective state schools and sixth-form colleges in Greater London and Kent annually, providing tailored educational and mentoring activities related to medicine. These students also learn about the Extended Medical Degree Programme (EMDP), initiated a dozen years ago by Professor Sir Cyril Chantler, former Dean of the GKT Medical & Dental Schools, to widen access for pupils from disadvantaged schools. Through the EMDP, pupils with potential, but with A-level grades which may be lower than those normally expected of prospective students, gain admission to King’s Medical School. These students have an extra year to complete the first two phases of the course but must pass all assessments at the same level as other students. From the third phase onwards, the course followed is exactly the same as the standard five-year degree. The programme has proven to be a great success and students have performed above expectations, with
Tim Palmer Guy’s, Medicine, 1982
Cancer and blood vessels King’s researchers discover a link King’s researchers have uncovered a protein that allows cancer cells to spread, a significant breakthrough in cancer research following five years of intensive lab work at the College. Researchers on the team behind this discovery have been looking at how cancer cells form new tumours in other parts of the body. Most deaths are due to cancer metastasis, which develops most commonly in the lungs, bones or liver, yet there are few treatments that prevent this from happening. Their work has shown for the first time that a protein found inside cancer
cells, called Cdc42, helps cells to attach themselves to blood vessel walls so they can spread to other parts of the body through the blood. ‘This could lead to the design of new treatments in the future to reduce metastasis,’ says Professor Anne Ridley, who heads the team. Although she is the project’s public face, she emphasises that its success is grounded in collaboration. ‘Much of the work was done by our former research fellow Dr Nicolas Raymond, now back in France, who joined us in 2005 and started the whole project,’ she says. ‘But a lot of other people have contributed, including Ruth Muschel and colleagues at Oxford University who helped us with techniques that we couldn’t carry out in our lab.’ This work complements many other research projects across the UK and abroad that are looking at how to stop
More than 1,000 alumni and friends of King’s have supported the College’s cancer research with donations. To join them, please email giving@kcl.ac.uk, call +44 (0)20 7848 4701 or visit the website alumni. kcl.ac.uk/cancer to learn more
cancer growing, although the King’s group is unique in investigating the disease’s interaction with blood vessels. For Professor Ridley, this research also has a personal element. ‘Around 10 years ago, my sister’s husband died of cancer,’ she says. ‘He was only 44. This motivated me to work on metastasis as it caused his death.’ Research of this kind has been funded through the generosity of the College’s supporters – cancer is one of the priorities of the World questions| King’s answers campaign – as well as by grants from charities such as Cancer Research UK. Professor Ridley hopes this latest advance will attract additional funding to move the research forward quickly. ‘I’m really excited about what we’re going to do next,’ she says. ‘We are recruiting two new people to continue the research but would really like to grow the team to push it forwards.’ spring 2013 IN TOUCH
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