The Birmingham office of global professional services firm, KPMG, has announced its staff will be supporting Cure Leukaemia in 2015.
KPMG has over 1000 employees in its Birmingham office and will be offering them the opportunity to be involved in Cure Leukaemia’s various fundraising events throughout the year. With KPMG on board, Cure Leukaemia is keen to encourage other Birmingham businesses to get involved with the charity and the work it supports.
Andy Argyle, Partner at KPMG in Birmingham, said: “We are delighted to announce our support for Cure Leukaemia. We are vocal in our backing of Birmingham as a centre for medical excellence, with the Life Sciences campus being a hub for expertise and employment. Our support for Cure Leukaemia feels like a natural progression to being able to practically help fund the search to find a cure for blood cancer. With so many great events coming up, our staff are ready and waiting for the fundraising to begin.”
Founded in 2003 by Professor Charlie Craddock, Cure Leukaemia helps to bring pioneering drug and transplant treatments to blood cancer patients throughout the Midlands. The charity helps finance the world class Centre for Clinical Haematology at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, to fund potentially life-saving clinical trials to treat patients with blood cancer who have exhausted standard treatment options. To date, Cure Leukaemia has helped to treat over 4000 patients by funding crucial specialist research nurses to administer clinical trials of potentially life-saving drugs thereby leveraging over £25million worth of revolutionary drugs.
Without the expert research nurses to ensure patients are constantly monitored and cared for; these trials would not run and patients would not be able to access the ever-increasing stream of promising drugs for the treatment of patients with blood cancer.
The West Midlands region, with a population of 5.5 million has the most ethnically diverse catchment area in Europe and, as a result, offers access to the broadest possible data pool for drug trials. Combined with a hub of leading medical research at the University of Birmingham, this makes Birmingham a centre of excellence in this field, offering hope to the 30,000 people who are diagnosed with blood cancer in the UK each year.
Cure Leukaemia co-founder Professor Charlie Craddock said, “The time is now for curing blood cancer. We know from experience that large numbers of patients are responding to these new treatments so this is the time to invest in clinical trial teams. There is no doubt that Birmingham is going to play an increasingly important role in ensuring within 30 years we have effective treatments for all patients with blood cancer and the most exciting aspect of the last ten years is that what was once a dream you can now see becoming a reality.”
Cure Leukaemia’s Head of Corporate Partnerships Jackie Kelly said, “It is fantastic to have a global company such as KPMG supporting the charity. It emphasises how more Birmingham businesses are recognising the fantastic work of Professor Charlie Craddock and his team at the Centre for Clinical Haematology. We look forward to working with KPMG this year and all funds raised will go directly into helping save lives here in Birmingham.”
