Marie Curie announces recipients of £1million of research grants

Annual conference sees announcement of five new research grants which will improve the future of palliative care.

Marie Curie, today (Friday) announces the recipients of five research grants totaling nearly £1 million to investigate how care for people living with a terminal illness could be improved.

Announced at the charity’s annual research conference held jointly with the Palliative Care Section of the Royal Society of Medicine today at The Royal Society of Medicine in London, the five projects which will be funded are:

• A study to test whether a drug called mirtazapine can help relieve breathlessness. This study is a feasibility trial – it aims to find out if the trial methods and drug are acceptable to those taking part and whether researchers can recruit enough people to a future trial. (The two year project, led by Professor Irene Higginson, King’s College London, receives £282,000).
• A study to develop and test a toolkit of “rules of thumb‟ for end of life care. “Rules of thumb” are ways of condensing knowledge into useful plans of action. For example, the FAST prompt for identifying stroke says if you have facial weakness (F), arm weakness (A), or slurred speech (S) you should telephone 999 (T). (The 12 month project, led by Dr Nathan Davies, University College London, receives £51,000)
• A project to develop and evaluate a simple bedside tool for community use to identify who is most likely to benefit from palliative radiotherapy for cancer induced bone pain (The two year project, led by Professor Marie Fallon, University of Edinburgh, receives £137,000) 
• A review of the evidence on the role and outcomes of clinical nurse specialists - how services can be best organised to improve symptom relief and the experience of palliative care quality and continuity across hospital and community care for patients who are diagnosed with advanced cancer in an emergency situation. (The 9 month project, led by Professor Jane Seymour, The University of Nottingham, receives £35,000)
• An investigation of whether or not paracetamol improves pain control in people already taking strong pain killers for cancer-related pain. (The three year project, led by Professor Marie Fallon and Dr Kerry McWilliams, University of Edinburgh and NHS Forth Valley, receives £394,000)

The grants were awarded on a competitive basis, under the Marie Curie Cancer Care Research Programme. Researchers submitted detailed proposals for their work, with the best being identified by a committee of independent experts. The application process was administered by Cancer Research UK.

Professor Bill Noble, Medical Director at Marie Curie, said: “We’re funding a diverse range of studies to address gaps in understanding of important research topics.

“We were delighted with the level of high-quality grant applications that we received. It not only demonstrates the growing recognition of the need for more research in this area but also the need for more investment to improve care for terminally ill people and their families.

“Marie Curie continues to be the major funder of palliative care research in the UK. No other charity targets this kind of research.

“Our research strategy aims to double our activity in palliative care research over the coming four years.”