Speaker -Dr Hayley Farmer-Hall - “Developments in Cancer Research”.

Hayley, the daughter of Rotarians Jim and Diane Farmer, grew up in Stanton Drew and attended Chew Valley School before winning a place at Reading University where she studied Pathobiology. After gaining her degree she studied Cardiovascular Pharmacology at St Bart’s Medical School where she was awarded a PhD.  

Hayley then worked for a biotechnology company for 5 years, conducting research into potential new drugs for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases and cancer. 

She joined Cancer Research UK in 2003 and now works as a Project Leader of a team responsible for clinical trials of three 3 new drugs to treat cancer.

She was able to describe in a succinct, empathetic and easily understood manner as to how cancer cells developed and how drugs were used to fight cancer.

She also told us of her own successful battle against cervical cancer which was diagnosed in 2007 just before she was due to fly out to trek across the Great Wall of China. Early diagnosis helped her fight against the disease and after receiving chemotherapy and radiotherapy, she was given the ‘all clear’ six months later.

She wasted no time rebooking her trek across the Great Wall of China and then followed that up with a fund-raising trip on behalf of Cancer Research UK to Mount Kilimanjaro. 

In addition to her busy and challenging research work which occasionally takes her abroad, she has become something of a globe trotter with much of South America, including the Galapagos Islands, as well as India and much of South East Asia ‘in the bag’. Her husband, Justin, told me until he met Hayley he had hardly travelled outside the UK – that’s all changed now.