Celebrating the launch of the Parasol Foundation Centre for Women's Health and Cancer Research (London)

In June we celebrated the launch of The Parasol Foundation Centre for Women’s Health and Cancer Research at Hammersmith and St Mary’s hospitals in north west London.

We’ve created the research centre in partnership with Imperial Health Charity and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust which is at the forefront of pioneering clinical research in a wide range of specialist fields.

Our £2.25mn donation will fund research to develop advanced treatments for women’s cancers, such as ovarian cancer, and explore the health impacts of pre-term birth. We’re helping to open up a new care pathway, fund innovative surgical equipment and explore approaches for reducing the likelihood of premature birth.

We’re supporting six fellowships for women to lead research in these fields. Dr Lynne Sykes, one of the early recipients a Parasol Foundation Fellowship, spoke movingly of her personal experiences of cancer and her drive to understand why pre-term birth happens, how we can possibly predict it and whether new therapeutic agents can be introduced to prevent pre-term delivery. Her dream in the next five years is to get close to being able to give women something that’s going to alter or modulate their immune response, which means that they can progress the pregnancy to full term and deliver at the right time.

We also heard from Dr Farah Rehman who illustrated, through the story of one breast cancer patient, the power of research to significantly improve the experiences and outcomes for women living with cancer. Imperial Health Charity is seeking help to expand the Parasol Foundation Centre’s research programme into breast cancer and you can find out more at Imperial Charity

Our new London centre underlines the strength of our commitment to improving women’s health. The project builds on our existing support for Laniado Hospital (Israel), Marin Health Medical Center (California) and the Parasol Foundation Women’s Cancer Research Center at Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv - one of our most significant long-term projects and one we have funded since its inception in 2016.