News

Are you thinking of making a will but don't know where to start? We understand that it may feel like a huge task, that’s why CTRT have partnered with Farewill to provide an easy to use, free, online will writing service. Here's what you need to know to get started. First, let's explain why writing a will is important. Writing a will is one of the most important things you can do for the people and causes you love. A will allows you to have control over what happens to your property, money and belongings after you die. If you're a parent, it is important to have a will in place if you have children under 18, as this allows you to state who you will want as their legal guardian if anything happens to you. If you're a homeowner, writing a will allows you to set out how you want to divide your estate including any property or financial accounts you own. You can make an inventory of your assets and choose exactly how much you would like people to inherit, helping to prevent family disputes. If you're in a partnership, after the death of a loved one, the amount of arrangements to be made can be overwhelming, writing a will can help alleviate that problem. A chance to leave a lasting legacy with charitable giving, it's not just people who can benefit from your will, but organisations such as CTRT can do too. What happens if you die without a will? If you die before making a will, any assets that can be found will be divided up following the rules of intestacy. These are a set of traditional rules that can define who has what, but it may not follow exactly what you want. When you make a will with Farewill you can make an inventory of assets, so your loved ones know exactly where to find everything. What do I need to get started with my will? Most people don’t really know what to put in a will until they get started. Some think they'll have to search through bank statements and pension information, while others worry about being inundated with complex jargon and expensive legal fees. Farewill's online will writing service takes that all away and makes writing a will simple and stress-free. By breaking everything down into a few manageable steps, you can write a will online in as little as 15 minutes. The usual cost of an online will with Farewill is around £100. By using our free service, you can save while still receiving a professionally checked will. Here are the key steps involved so you know exactly what to expect when you start writing a will: Enter your name, email and password to create your account About You - a little bit of information about you and your family Guardians – If you have pets or children under 18 in the first section of your will, you'll then be asked to appoint guardians for them Accounts and Property – in this section you will be able to make a simple inventory of your assets. This then ensures that everything is easy to find when you're gone. Your estate – this is where you can decide the estate split between beneficiaries, i.e. who/what organisations are inheriting Executors – these are the people you choose to be responsible for carrying out the terms of the will Gifts – this is where you can choose to leave specific gifts to friends, family or charities. Funeral wishes – you can include funeral arrangements in your will but this section is optional and not legally binding Choosing executors of your will Executors are the people responsible for making sure your wishes are followed after you die, so you should choose people who you can trust and are comfortable with paperwork and admin. You can appoint a family member, friend or professional or a combination of all three whilst using Farewill's online will writing service. Find out more about appointing executors of your will. What happens after I complete my will online? Once you've finished writing your will, Farewill's experts check and approve it within five working days. Then you can print and sign it from the comfort of your own home to make it legally binding. This means you can go from creating your account to having a legal will in your hand within five working days. Can I update my will? You may have written your will already but that doesn't always mean your needs and wishes are going to stay the same. We recommend checking and updating your will every 2-3 years to make sure all the changes in your lifestyle circumstances such as, buying a new property, having a baby or getting married, and assets are accounted for. This can be updated in your farewill account at any time. Why choose to leave CTRT a gift in your will? Through a gift in your will, you can help to provide a lasting legacy for a future without cancer, helping our team to advance life-saving cancer research for years to come.Whilst there is no obligation to include a gift in your will, we hope you will consider leaving a gift to CTRT once your loved ones are provided for. Get started on your will here: Online Will Writing Service | Legal Will In 15 Minutes Find out more about writing your will with Farewill here: Everything you need to know about wills

Gestational trophoblastic neoplasia (GTN) (a form of Gestational Trophoblastic Disease) is a type of malignant (cancerous) tumour that develops during or after pregnancy from cells that would normally form the placenta – the organ that feeds the growing baby. GTN is rare and also highly unusual. Whilst all other cancers grow from the body’s own cells, GTN comes from cells that belong to the placenta which genetically is part of the fetus. Usually, cells in the body that aren’t ‘self’ are recognised as foreign & destroyed by the immune system. However, special mechanisms come in to play during pregnancy, which limits immune reactions to prevent the mother’s immune system destroying the baby and placenta. As is typical of cancers, however, GTN can hijack these mechanisms to avoid being targeted by the immune system, enabling it to grow and spread to other parts of the mother’s body. On the flip side, GTN responds much better than other cancers to a certain type of immunotherapy, with a cure rate of around 75%. Immunotherapy works by stimulating the body's own immune system to target and kill cancer cells, which begs the obvious question: how does this treatment expose the tumour to attack by the immune system? This is precisely the topic that Yiming Guan, a PhD student funded by the Cancer Treatment & Research Trust, is researching. Together with his coworkers, and under the supervision of Dr Ehsan Ghorani, Yiming aims to investigate the immune cell ‘landscape’ of GTN, in essence creating a directory of the types and locations of immune cells around the tumour before and after immunotherapy. The current thinking is that, in the absence of immunotherapy, GTN tumour cells send instructions to a certain type of immune cell (a CD4 T cell), telling it to adopt a more tolerant role and to talk its comrades out of mounting an immune attack; immunotherapy, however, intercepts these messages so that CD4 cells enlist in and coordinate an immune cell army to destroy the tumour cells. Precisely what determines whether these T cells behave as peacekeepers or soldiers, though, isn’t fully understood. In the 3-year PhD project funded by CTRT, Yiming and his fellow lab mates will use state-of-the-art ‘multi-omics’ techniques to generate huge amounts of information about the biological molecules that are present in GTN tumours, and immune cells from tissue samples taken from untreated patients and from patients given the immunotherapy drug Pembrolizumab. Changes in the amounts of particular molecules and/or their whereabouts within individual tumour and immune cells could give us more insight into the mechanisms that militarize T cells against the tumours. Since GTN responds so well to immunotherapy, these studies could uncover important principles that might help to improve this treatment for other, more common cancers that do not usually respond well to treatment.