Celebrating the researchers you’ve helped fund

Last week, we rounded off Bowel Cancer Awareness Month with our second Research Together Day. This fantastic event brings together the bowel cancer researchers we fund with the charity team to celebrate the research we've supported.

We first held our Research Together day in 2025 and this year we were excited to be able to build on its success. Events like this allow our team to get to know our grant holders better and hear directly from them about how their work is progressing. It’s also an opportunity to explore ways we can work together to make the biggest impact. 

During the day, we invited our grant holders to speak about their projects. We heard from a variety of speakers, including:

• Dr Jennifer Fisher, representing a team from the Institute of Cancer Research, shared plans fordeveloping a new blood test to predict bowel cancer risk in people with inflammatory bowel disease. The project, starting this year, aims to provide people with the condition with much better information about their bowel cancer risk, so they and their clinical team can make informed decisions on how best to manage it.
• Dr Stephen McSorley and Dr Emma Parsons gave an update on their ongoing project at the University of Glasgow looking at inequalities in bowel cancer surveillance. They’ve been interviewing patients and healthcare professionals and studying polyps (pre-cancerous growths), to better understand differences in surveillance between areas of high and low deprivation.
• Professor Lesley Smith from the University of Hull presented her study on uptake of bowel cancer screening in the South Asian community. The results from the interviews in this project are now being put into practice in Bradford, testing practical ways that people from this community can be encouraged and supported to take part in the bowel screening programme.

Hearing about the progress of these projects, the potential they have to make a real difference to people affected by bowel cancer and the dedication of the scientists leading the work was truly inspiring.

We were also honoured to be joined by Mike Barnes, fresh from running three marathons in two weeks for Bowel Cancer UK. As well as his fundraising and awareness work, Mike volunteers with our Research Network to help shape bowel cancer research.

Mike shared the story of his daughter Laura, who died from bowel cancer aged just 36. It was a powerful reminder of why research matters and how much more there is still to do.

Involving people affected by bowel cancer, and ensuring their voices are heard, is central to everything we do. Their experiences help shape research so it focusses on the issues that matter most to patients and their families. 

This event is also about creating connections between researchers themselves. By bringing researchers together and giving them space to talk over breaks and lunch, we were delighted to see them making connections, discussing techniques, and kickstarting new collaborations.

Currently, there aren’t any dedicated conferences in the UK focussed solely on bowel cancer research, so without our Research Together Day, many of these researchers would never have the opportunity to meet. We’ll be watching with interest to see what might develop from the new partnerships formed this year.

And in the meantime, we’re already thinking about 2027.

• Find out more about our research
• Donate now to help fund our vital research work