Avon funds three clinical research fellows, affectionately know as "Dr Avons". Based at Breakthrough Breast Cancer's research centre in London, they're working to investigate the causes of and treatments for breast cancer.
As both qualified medical doctors and talented scientists, each Dr Avon is a vital link between science and medicine, bringing the benefits of research directly to women with breast cancer. Whilst understanding the possibilities of science, they're also aware of the every-day issues faced by women with breast cancer.
The Dr Avon programme was the first clinical fellowship program by a UK beauty company.
Mariam Jamal-Hanjani
Having always had an interest in human biology, Mariam pursued a medical career and chose oncology as her speciality. She joins the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research and the Dr Avon Scheme having previously been a specialist registrar in medical oncology at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital, London.
Mariam decided to apply to be a Clinical Fellow in order to work in a laboratory looking at different aspects of breast cancer so that she could be part of an environment of doctors and scientists working together to understand and develop new ways to treat and manage breast cancer.
As a Dr Avon, she will be looking at genes that may be involved in the spread of breast cancer. She will be investigating possible treatment options that target these genes in order to keep them activated and therefore prevent or at least, slow the progression of the disease.
Dr Farah Rehman
Dr Farah Rehman is working in Professor Alan Ashworth's team to discover if PARP inhibitors could work more effectively in combination with other drugs. A new class of drugs, PARP inhibitors have the potential to treat a third of all breast cancers, and have shown a significant benefit in clinical trials and it is believed they will be used in the clinic in the next few years. Although many patients benefit from PARP inhibitors, some do not respond, while others relapse after a period of treatment.
Farah, now in the second year of her PhD, has been treating cancer cells with PARP inhibitors and other drugs to find more effective treatment combinations. Farah has identified several promising drug combinations and, over the next few months, will be looking into these in more detail. It is hoped that the she will identify some drugs that make PARP inhibitor treatment more effective that can be investigated further with the aim to get these into the clinic for patients as soon as possible.
All two Dr Avons carry out their work at the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Centre. Avon donated over a third of the funding needed to establish the centre in 1991.
