By Marjory Inglis, health reporter

A CAMPAIGN that has raised more than £16 million for cancer research in Dundee will continue despite death and disease striking the leadership.

Dr Jacqui Wood, chairwoman of the Ninewells Cancer Campaign, yesterday gave a spirited commitment to carry on with the important work following the death at 91 last month of Dr Pat McPherson, one of the driving forces behind the campaign.

Dr Wood is battling against ovarian cancer, a personal fight that has done nothing to reduce her enthusiasm for the wider effort to promote cancer research locally and support the world leading scientists in the city.

She was recruited to the effort by Dr McPherson many years ago and the partnership proved incredibly successful, indefatigably touring the region highlighting the research work going on, encouraging people to donate cash and collecting cheques, big and small.

“The campaign will continue because that is what Pat would want,” said Dr Wood. “Cancer has still got to be beaten and there is every possibility it is going to happen here in Dundee. We have got to be in there supporting them.

“Pat said to me he wanted the campaign to continue. Obviously there is a big hole without him but we think what is going on here is too important. When you have got the world’s very best here, it is only right we continue supporting them.”

Dr Wood said that the campaign would be looking for more people to get involved and take forward its work. She would be meeting the campaign’s vice-chairwoman Fiona Fraser to look ahead and make plans to take the campaign forward.

“That is for the future, but I know Pat would be disappointed if we just said, ‘Oh well, that’s it’ and just drew a line under it.”

Dr Wood is continuing to receive treatment at Ninewells where her disease is closely monitored by the medical teams who came to know her well as a campaigner long before she presented as a patient last year.

She says she gets very special treatment, not because of who she is, but where she is. She firmly believes that everybody in Tayside with cancer gets special treatment because there are world-leading cancer specialists in Dundee.

The next goal of the campaign is to raise £1.5 million for a personalised medicine project that aims to predict why some people respond to drug treatments and others don’t, then predict what drugs in what doses will help individuals.

Already £1 million has been raised and Dr Wood has every confidence the rest of the cash will roll in.

The campaign’s record is such that those behind the project are forging ahead, instructing the architects and builders who will refurbish a laboratory block at Ninewells that will house the project’s scientists. The refurbishment is expected to take six months and is due to start in the autumn.

The space will also be home to the new chair of cancer biology, a development announced shortly before Dr McPherson’s death last month, that will bear his name and be a fitting honour to the man who did so much to advance cancer research and treatment.

“I think he deserved a knighthood but a knighthood would have died with him,” said Dr Wood. “With this his name will live on. The Dr Pat McPherson chair in cancer biology will always be there.”