A Christ’s education can be an inspiring and transformational experience, opening up a world of opportunities to our students during their time at College and after they graduate.
Leaving an unrestricted gift to Christ’s allows us the flexibility to respond to the area of greatest need at any given time, whether that be supporting world-changing research, providing more in the way of student welfare, or protecting and enhancing the College’s physical environment.
The JB and Millicent Kaye Prize for Cancer Research is just one example of how much legacies can achieve across the board.
The JB and Millicent Kaye Prize for Cancer Research
The JB and Millicent Kaye Prize for Cancer Research was founded in 1995 from the legacy of Mrs Millicent Dora Kaye, the widow of James Blamires Kaye, who matriculated at Christ’s in 1923.
Since the Prize was founded, it has supported numerous Kaye fellows in their cancer-related research. It is currently being used to support the research of Dr James Jones, and Dr Isabel Huang Doran.
Dr James Jones’s primary research interest is in understanding how the tumour microenvironment influences respond to treatment in kidney cancer. He is working on several clinical trials with the aim of improving outcomes for patients with early kidney cancer, as a significant proportion of patients with kidney cancer develop incurable relapse. James is also using patient samples to determine why some patients respond better than others to drug therapy. A Christ’s alumnus himself, he has been supervising undergraduates at Christ’s since 2009.
Dr Isabel Huang-Doran, also a Christ’s alumna, works on combining laboratory-based metabolic research with clinical practice in endocrinology and diabetes. Her research focuses on the close relationship between metabolic disease and reproductive health. In particular, she is exploring the molecular mechanisms by which obesity predisposes towards endometrial cancer. She is a supervisor in Neurobiology and Human Reproduction.
The JB and Millicent Kaye Prize has also been used to fund students researching cancer in scientific placements and internships. Most recently, fourth-year medical student Isabella Monsanto, used the fund to spend the summer working at the Okkenhaug lab, investigating the mechanisms by which cancer evades immunotherapy.
I sincerely believe that awards like the Kaye Fund are pivotal for students exploring the early stages of their research career. As an aspiring clinician-scientist, this multitude of unknowns converge onto one question that drives me: despite the strides in medicine we have made, why do sick people stay sick, and why aren’t we better at helping them get better? As a student, this project provided a rich learning opportunity to develop fundamental wet-lab skills, which I undoubtedly will utilise for the rest of my career. Many aspiring researchers such as myself would find work experience in a lab like this immensely valuable; unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to find such opportunities without funding, and many of us cannot afford to spend our long vacations learning on work experience instead of earning money via a conventional job. Therefore, I am forever grateful to have been afforded the opportunity by the Kaye Fund not only to work in a lab, but to be paid a living wage for the full duration of my project.
- Isabella Monsanto