With your incredible support, we awarded £21.7m of funding across 142 projects in 2024-2025, in our mission to support ground-breaking research and transformational healthcare across East London.
This has ranged from smaller grants, designed to positively impact day-to-day life at Barts Health hospitals, to larger grants that allow for innovation in healthcare and research. We do this with our partners at Barts Health NHS Trust, Queen Mary University of London and City St George’s, University of London.
We also continue to invest in the future of research, supporting healthcare professionals to undertake PhD training. Our training opportunities are open to all allied healthcare professionals who want to improve East London lives through innovative health-related research projects.
Read below
Helping care for David’s heart
David has a problem with his heart. One of the valves leaks a little. He is being carefully looked after by Munira, who is the valve nurse specialist at St Bartholomew’s Hospital.
Munira’s role was first funded by us in 2023 – and she has since become a permanent member of staff.
Munira has significantly increased capacity at Barts Heart Centre – with 22.5% more patients being seen face-to-face in the first three months. This has led to a dramatic improvement in waiting times. Before Munira was recruited, the average wait was up to five months. Now it’s between four and eight weeks, depending on the severity of the case.
“I think the clinic’s absolutely brilliant,” David said. “I don’t have to have ever to deal with my GP. If I ever need to come here, I just email Munira. She’s on the phone within a couple of hours.”
David had an issue last year where something didn’t feel right in his chest. He contacted Munira. “She phoned me within two hours,” he said. “A week later, I’m having an MRI scan on my heart. In the end it was just stress, but it solved the problem and there was nothing for me to worry about.”
This is the impact your donations have had for people who attend the valvular heart clinic, like David.
Patient David with Munira, who is the valvular heart nurse at Barts Heart Centre
Innovative new treatments for aggressive breast cancers
Basal-like breast cancer is an aggressive type of the disease. It often affects younger people and is more common among those from African or South Asian backgrounds – a core part of our East London community. This type of cancer grows quickly and is hard to treat with traditional methods like chemotherapy.
With the support of our funding, Professor Cleo Bishop has been leading a research project that is developing a new treatment.
Called the “one-two punch”, it aims to halt tumour cell growth and can potentially make cancer cells visible to the immune system and easier to attack. This method could be a more targeted and effective treatment with fewer side effects, offering a better prognosis for patients.
The team is now working to advance the new treatment and license it. This could have enormous benefits for patients in the future.
Cleo Bishop and her team in the lab, developing innovative treatments for basal-like breast cancer
Safeguarding our future
We’re one of the oldest foundations in the country with origins dating back to 1123. Our track record of careful financial management has allowed us to commit to a funding target of £30 million a year until 2027.
However, only your donations ensure that we can continue to be there for Barts Health staff and patients, through it all.