DRWF are delighted to announce that they have been selected to present a poster presentation in the House of Commons on 19th July in recognition of their contribution to medical research in the field of diabetes.
Sarah Bone, DRWF Chief Executive said, ‘We are delighted that DRWF has been chosen to showcase one of its research funding commitments to our new parliamentarians, ensuring that they are aware of the vital contribution made by charitable organisations to the medical research arena.’
With 226 new MPs and a new coalition government, the presentation will give MPs the opportunity to meet charities, hear from invited speakers, find out more about medical research and get updated on the latest work that is being funded by medical research charities.
This years’ reception will tell a story about the lifecycle of medical research: from underpinning science to clinical practice, encompassing epidemiology, applied and translational research, policy and infrastructure projects.
The Association for Medical Research Charities (AMRC) invited All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPG) members to nominate researchers they believed would bring research alive for Parliamentarians, giving them a glimpse of the bigger picture, how each piece of the jigsaw comes together to have a real impact on patients’ lives.
With an overwhelming response of applications, the expert panel of judges were given the difficult task of choosing the best posters to represent UK medical research.
The DRWF application was made on the back of having committed more than £5.9 million to diabetes research since its inception in 1998. In 2006, DRWF awarded £1.2 million to the University of Oxford to build a ‘state of the art’ human islet isolation facility to enable islet cell transplants to progress from ‘the bench to the bedside’.The Clinical Islet Transplant Programme is now funded by the Department of Health and the DRWF facility provides human islets to five other centres across the UK.
DRWF’s poster, ‘Diabetes – Building today for a cure tomorrow’, was entered under the category ‘Building infrastructure’ from which three winning posters were selected. This category is all about building facilities to support world-calibre research and supporting the development of researchers with the skills to work in them.
Professor Paul R V Johnson MBChB MA MD FRCS(Eng +Edin) FRCS(Paed.Surg) FAAP Professor of Paediatric Surgery, University of Oxford Director of DRWF Human Islet Isolation Facility and Oxford Islet Transplant Programme Consultant Paediatric Surgeon, John Radcliffe Hospital, University of Oxford will be attending the presentation along with DRWF Chief Executive, Sarah Bone.
The DRWF poster will be presented in Parliament from 4pm to 6pm on Monday 19 July, along with 18 other charity posters, including contributions from the British Heart Foundation and Cancer Research UK. More information is available from the AMRC website