https://www.stmarkshospitalfoundation.org.uk/, https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/st-marks-seasonal-appeal-2025

St. Mark's Hospital Foundation, Acton Lane, London (2026)

08/04/2026

👋Meet the Team: Focus on Bowel Cancer

Introducing consultant colorectal surgeons, Mr Ian Jenkins, Ms Elaine Burns and Ms Nicola Hodges, the co-leads of the St Mark’s Complex Cancer Clinic.

The Complex Cancer Clinic at St Mark’s Hospital is a specialist service that treats patients with recurrent and advanced pelvic and colorectal cancers. As a referral centre, St Mark’s is likely to perform two-to three-times more bowel cancer operations compared to other UK hospitals. 💪

A multi-disciplinary team, including specialist radiologists, surgeons, nurses and other health care professionals, offer a personalised pathway of care for each patient until they are well enough to be referred back to their local team.

📖John was a patient of Ms Elaine Burns and the Complex Cancer Clinic. He and his wife, Wendy, took on an incredible challenge to thank the St Mark’s team that cared for him.

🔗Read his full story: https://www.stmarkshospitalfoundation.org.uk/stories/johns-story/

Together, we can make a difference💙

🎁This Bowel Cancer Awareness Month, a donation to St Mark’s Hospital Foundation could help us support research and education which will continue to advance clinical practice and improve patients’ lives.

06/04/2026

👋Meet the Team: Focus on Bowel Cancer

St Mark’s Hospital is a key site for the NHS Bowel Cancer Screening Programme. Led by Professor Brian Saunders, Director of Bowel Cancer Screening for all of North West London, the St Mark’s Bowel Cancer Screening service looks for polyps (small growths on the lining of the colon or the re**um). 🔎

Detecting and removing polyps before they can become cancerous can reduce the risk of getting bowel cancer by half.‼️

✨St Mark’s state-of-the-art endoscopy department continues to break ground in cancer prevention technology. The site recently acquired an AI polyp detection unit which will significantly increase the rate of detection of pre-cancerous polyps in patients.

Together, we can make a difference💙

🎁This Bowel Cancer Awareness Month, a donation to St Mark’s Hospital Foundation could help us support research and education which will continue to advance clinical practice and improve patients’ lives.

🔗https://www.stmarkshospitalfoundation.org.uk/donate/

03/04/2026

💙📣This Bowel Cancer Awareness Month, we are honoured to share the stories of St Mark’s patients and their families.

We are inspired by their resilience and their dedication to supporting St Mark’s Hospital Foundation which makes a measurable difference for other patients impacted by bowel cancer.

💙Katie, daughter of a St Mark’s patient, shared her family’s experience:

“Early last year, my mum was diagnosed with colon cancer through a routine screening for bowel cancer. It was such a shock as she had no symptoms and felt well.

To help keep my mum’s spirits up, I really wanted to complete some sort of challenge for a charity and it had to be St Mark’s.

From the very first appointment, through to the successful robotic surgery to remove the tumour, the team at St Mark’s was fantastic. We are so lucky that St Mark’s is our local hospital, and I wanted to say thank you by running the Royal Parks Half Marathon!

It was one of the best days of my life and to have my friends, family and mum (who has made a full recovery!) supporting me the whole way was incredible.” 🎉

📖🔗Read Katie’s full story on our website: https://www.stmarkshospitalfoundation.org.uk/stories/katies-story/

01/04/2026

🗣️April is Bowel Cancer Awareness Month, and at St Mark’s Hospital Foundation, we are proud to support St Mark’s, the UK’s national bowel hospital, where world-leading specialists provide expert care for bowel cancer patients and undertake research to improve patient outcomes.

From early detection to advanced treatments, St Mark’s is home to:

⚕️ The Bowel Cancer Screening Centre
⚕️ The Complex Cancer Clinic
⚕️ The Centre for Familial & Inherited Cancer
⚕️ The Gastrointestinal Consequences of Cancer Service

🔗Read more about bowel cancer treatment at St Mark’s Hospital: https://www.stmarkshospital.nhs.uk/services-a-z/

30/03/2026

🩺🎉Happy National Doctors' Day!

Today we recognise all of the incredible physicians whose hard work, expertise, and dedication to their patients makes the specialist care and life-changing research at St Mark's Hospital possible.

💜Is there a St Mark's doctor who you'd like to recognise?

🔗Thank them in the comments or by leaving a message on Shared Gratitude: https://bit.ly/4dXN22e

25/03/2026

🏅At St Mark's Hospital Foundation, we're proud to support award-winning medical research.🎉

Congratulations to Luke Hanna for winning this year's Young ECCO Abstract Award at the 2026 ECCO Congress! This award goes to the top five research abstracts written by individuals under 35 years old or still in training. 🩺

🔬Luke's research focuses on understanding the immune cells and processes that drive perianal fistulas in Crohn’s disease. These are abnormal tunnels that form between the bowel and the skin, and can be very difficult to treat.

💊He explored whether a newer class of medication for Crohn’s disease, known as JAK inhibitors (specifically "upadacitinib"), could be particularly effective for this condition. This involved laboratory work using cells from patients with fistulas, as well as studying outcomes in a group of patients treated with this drug.

📢Luke told the Foundation, “improving treatment options for perianal Crohn’s disease is essential, as it remains one of the most challenging forms of inflammatory bowel disease to manage. Research like this helps us better understand what drives the disease and which treatments may work best, ultimately aiming to improve outcomes and quality of life for patients.”

20/03/2026

🔬✈️Last month, St Mark's clinicians went to Sweden to attend the 21st Congress of the European Crohn's and Colitis Organisation.

This year, the conference focused on holistic patient care. 💜

In the opening session, St Mark's own Professor Ailsa Hart took the stage to discuss 'Approaching Diversity in IBD'. She emphasized the wide range of symptoms present in inflammatory bowel disease and the way diverse patient backgrounds can impact personal experiences of IBD and the need for individualized care.

🌍As a global leader in bowel disease research and treatment, St Mark's was heavily represented at the conference.

Mr Phil Tozer and Professor Omar Faiz each conducted highly attended sessions on best practices in colorectal surgery. Overall, IBD-focused consultants, nurses, and research fellows gave a total of 6 talks and presented a total of 26 research posters over 3 days.‼️💪

🎉Congratulations to all of the St Mark's attendees for being invited to share their research.

🔗Learn more about the conference and the incredible research supported by St Mark's Hospital Foundation here: https://stmarksacademicinstitute.org.uk/st-marks-at-the-21st-congress-of-the-european-crohns-and-colitis-organisation-ecco/

13/03/2026

📢🔬Help Shape the Future of Crohn’s and Colitis Research in the UK

Are you living with Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis? Are you a carer or family member of someone with inflamatory bowel disease (IBD) or an IBD-focused healthcare professional?

✨Applications are now open to join the 2026 UK IBD Priority Setting Partnership Steering Group.✨

Your experience and perspectives are vital in helping ensure research focuses on what matters most to people affected by IBD.

This project will identify the Top 10 research priorities for inflammatory bowel disease in the UK, helping guide national strategy and future research funding.

No previous research experience is required.

Steering group members will take part in a small number of online meetings and help review and prioritise research questions.

📅 Application deadline: 30th April 2026
🔗 Apply here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfNiNURIKrUWTwpcYMxurMWfq4OwBke25TTRnBQMJsHAAU4kQ/viewform

Please consider applying or sharing with someone who may be interested.

11/03/2026

💜We love when our supporters bring their own unique approaches to fundraising for St Mark's Hospital Foundation.

Aidan has been a patient of St Mark's Hospital since 2012 when he was referred to the care of Dr Jeremy Nightingale, a now retired Consultant Gastroenterologist specialising in intestinal failure and inflammatory bowel disease.

Aidan sat down with the Foundation to share his story and his decision to give back.💜🛠️

"I see St Mark's as an adult version of Great Ormond Street in the way staff and nurses are with patients—nothing is too much bother for them. I am a self-taught welder and have been welding since 1997. I have decided to make some dog and cat sculptures to raise money for St Mark's. This is how I would like to give something back to the hospital."

😺🐶Interested in supporting St Mark's by purchasing a garden creature of your own?

Each sculpture costs around £30 and is made to order from recycled scrap metal. DM us for more info, and we'd be happy to put you in touch with Aidan. 🤝

04/03/2026

✨Turning personal experience into meaningful research ✨🔬

We're lucky to have such dedicated, talented, and inspiring people in the St Mark's community 💜

Meet Ollie Kaye (Thekidwithabag). The 3rd year medical student and content creator has returned to St Mark's Hospital, where he was once a patient, to contribute to ongoing research into patient education around diet and Ulcerative Colitis.

🥳Congratulations on presenting this research at your recent undergrad conference.

Read Ollie's thoughts below:

“Firstly a huge thank you to St Mark’s, particularly to Itai, Orestis and Dakota, who welcomed me into their team and gave me the opportunity to contribute to such meaningful research. We conducted a thematic analysis of diet-related TikTok videos in relation to Ulcerative Colitis (UC) surgery, to better understand the information these patients are exposed to online.

As both a patient at St Mark’s Hospital myself, and a content creator who shares my experiences of living with IBD and a stoma bag on social media, I personally understand and live with the challenges surrounding food and misinformation on these platforms.

Now, as a third-year medical student, it’s incredibly rewarding to be part of work that has the potential to improve clinical practice and patient education. I’m especially proud to have presented this research at my first undergraduate conference, a milestone that marks the beginning of what I hope will be a lifelong journey in research. Being able to contribute to research with the very hospital that cared for me feels truly full circle.”

28/02/2026

🔎Spotlight on Polyposis for Rare Disease Day

Rare disease day is a global movement seeking to increase awareness of rare diseases (affecting fewer than 1 in 2,000 people) worldwide 🌏💪

🧬The Polyposis team at St Mark's Hospital (pictured above), are world leaders in diagnosing and treating Familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP), an inherited condition that affects 1 in 8,000 people in the UK and greatly increases their risk of developing colorectal cancer.

The St Mark’s Hospital Polyposis Registry was started in 1924, and 100 years later, continues to provide genetic counselling and testing, surgery, endoscopic management, and multidisciplinary life-long care to thousands of patients with FAP.

As a rare disease, FAP patients often face lack of awareness of their condition and difficulty accessing specialist care. To combat this, NHS England and the St Mark's Polyposis team, led by Professor Sue Clark, developed a UK-wide Rare Disease Collaborative Network in 2022.

The seven specialist centres in the network benefit from the cutting-edge knowledge and training at St Mark's Hospital and provide expert care for patients and families with rare polyposis syndromes across the country. 💜

🔗Learn more about the Polyposis registry and St Mark's Familial and Inherited Cancer team here: https://www.stmarkshospital.nhs.uk/the-polyposis-registry/

21/02/2026

💜Thanks to our generous supporters, St Mark’s Hospital Foundation is able to fund the cost of around 30 research fellows, like Gita, every year.

These fellows represent the future of not only St Mark’s, but gastroenterology and colorectal surgery worldwide. 🔬🌏

We appreciate Gita for sharing her experience at St Mark’s:

“My experience at St Mark’s has been exceptional. The hospital’s history creates an environment where research is embedded into daily practice. What makes it unique is the culture there is a genuine openness to collaboration, academic discussion, and innovation. Working alongside clinicians and researchers who are leaders in their fields has been both inspiring and humbling.

This experience has reinforced for me that the future of colorectal surgery will not be defined by technology alone, but by how we integrate technology with thoughtful clinical care. I’m excited to see where the next phase of this work leads.”

🔗📃Learn more about Gita’s research and her time as a fellow at St Mark’s here: https://www.stmarkshospitalfoundation.org.uk/news/interview-with-gita-lingam/

St. Mark's Hospital Foundation

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