Royal Free Charity | “I lost my best friend to a cancer we’d never…

“I lost my best friend to a cancer we’d never heard of”

Royal Engineer runs marathon in full army kit to support research into rare neuroendocrine cancer

A Royal Engineers officer has run a marathon in full army kit to raise money for research into the rare cancer that killed her best friend. 

Katy Vincent ran the 26 miles between her home and the home of her best friend, Miranda Filmer, earlier this month on the date that would have been Miranda’s 31st birthday. 

Miranda died last summer five years after she was diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer.

Little is known about underlying genetic makeup of the rare tumours that Miranda had, and there is a lack of understanding of the genetic differences between them. 

The money Katy raises will support a research project to examine why some neuroendocrine tumour cells within a patient are more aggressive, why the cells change their structure, and how they respond to treatment. 

The aim is to better understand which treatments work better on which patients.

Read more about Katy’s motivation for taking on this fundraising challenge in this Metro article.