Our Focus
The Fellowship, which is seeking philanthropic support totalling £110,000, will attract an outstanding Medical School graduate (5 years) with an additional 4 years of clinical experience to take part in a fully funded one-year programme comprising three months of taught courses, six months of laboratory work and analysis and subsequent thesis writing to share with the medical community.
The main focus of the Fellowship is research into Mucormycosis, a feared complication in patients undergoing chemotherapy for leukaemia and other malignancies, and in patients receiving a bone marrow or solid organ transplant. It is the second most common mould infection leading to excessive destruction of organs, blood vessels and has extremely high mortality rates of 80%.
Medical mycology is the study of fungi
There are more than 1.5 million deaths worldwide each year as a result of invasive fungal infections.
Noah's Pink Balloon Leukaemia Fund and the world-renowned MRC Centre for Medical Mycology are working together to help save lives and bring urgent attention to invasive fungal infections and the infection risk faced by those already battling leukaemia.
Supporting our research aim of funding and finding the best treatment for, and prevention of fungal infections in children with a compromised immune system, the University of Exeter and the MRC Centre for Medical Mycology have created the Noah's Pink Balloon Leukaemia Fellowship.
Our Research
Saving a child's life requires early clinical recognition and rapid diagnostic and therapeutic intervention. There is an urgency to develop better diagnostic tools, better treatments and improved clinical management. It is of the highest priority that we research how the fungi interacts with the host immune system and how we can suppress its growth.
Noah's Pink Balloon Leukaemia Fund Fellowship is the first step to beating this aggressive species of fungi. Irrespective of the chemotherapy timeline, a child with leukaemia will sadly be hospitalised with an infection as a result of a weakened immune system at some point and this is why our research is so important.
We need to develop high impact treatment that will improve the outcome, help prevent and diagnose the type of fungal infection to increase the survival rate of children like Noah who may have to battle two deadly diseases.
Your support of the Fellowship program will help to build expertise and critical knowledge in the medical community.
