So many more children now survive leukaemia than don’t. But they don’t all make it and this was brought home to us by the tragic story of the son of one of our shipping friends who attended our Maritime People and Culture Conference in May.
Every September, Spinnaker host 30 shipping teams messing about on the water in the OSCAR Dragon Boat Race in London Docklands. Its namesake is the son of our Chairman Phil Parry. Oscar survived a 5 year battle with two different leukaemias and was save by three transplants and experimental treatment.
We are funding a three year fellowship in the latest treatment and research. The current challenge is to find out why the new CAR-T cell therapy which has saved the lives of so many children with otherwise incurable acute lymphoblastic leukaemia doesn’t work in about half of the children who relapse. By solving that problem we can save those children.
This year, you can register to attend the OSCAR Dragon Boat Race even if you’re not getting wet in a boat – use the eventbrite link here:
https://dragonboat2022.eventbrite.co.uk/
And you can sponsor Spinnaker’s team, ‘Spinnaker Strokes’ by clicking on the following link. Please do. It’s important. Every penny counts.
