More than half of the money raised for the University of Southampton’s £25 million Centre for Cancer Immunology – which will be the first of its kind in the UK – has come from Channel Islands residents.
The university launched the campaign in 2015 and so far £24 million has been raised. The four-storey centre is currently under construction at Southampton General Hospital.
It is expected that the facility, which will bring together world-leading cancer scientists under one roof and enable interdisciplinary teams to expand clinical trials and develop life-saving drugs, will open next year.
Professor Tim Elliott, the centre’s director, said: ‘We are thrilled to have reached the £24 million mark and we are hugely grateful to everyone who has contributed so far.
‘It has taken a lot of hard work by a lot of people to reach this brilliant milestone. Although we still have some way to go, it is very exciting to be within touching distance of our new centre being a reality.’
The campaign has been fully funded through philanthropic donations and community fundraising, a large portion of which has come from the Channel Islands including a £1.35 million donation by James and Mindy Vernon on World Cancer Day in February and a £1 million donation from Jim Wilkinson and his trustee, Collas Crill Trust.
Immunotherapy is a revolutionary treatment, supercharging the body’s natural defences to find and destroy cancer.
For decades Southampton scientists have made a number of advances in tumour immunology and immunotherapy research with a reputation for its ‘bench to bedside’ results.
The new treatments being developed by Southampton scientists, in the form of vaccines and antibodies, direct special immune cells against cancers. These ‘killer’ cells can control and shrink cancer and give long-lasting protection.
The university is developing treatments to target some of the most aggressive forms of the disease including cancers of the lung and skin, and childhood neuroblastoma.
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