Think Pink Lux presented this year’s Marian Aldred Award, worth €20,000, to Hannah Wurzer, a doctoral candidate working at the Cytoskeleton and Cancer Progression group at the Luxembourg Institute of Health’s Department of Oncology, and Dr Clément Thomas, who heads the research group, on Monday.

For the past two years, the Marian Aldred Award has gone to support a research scholarship at the Luxembourg Institute of Health, in the laboratory run by Dr Thomas, which is investigating ways to stop breast cancer from metastasising (where cancer spreads through the body). Carrie Cannon of Think Pink Lux told Delano in 2019 that metastasisation is often far deadlier than the primary tumour.

In an emailed message this week, Think Pink Lux stated that this year’s “donation will support the team’s research on tumour immune escape mechanisms important in the use of immunotherapy in cancer, which you can find out more about here in a short video from Hannah.”

Previously the Marian Aldred Award supported cancer research at Kirchberg Hospital’s Laboratory for Molecular and Cellular Biology of Cancer, which received a total of €63,000. Altogether, Think Pink Lux has donated €116,000 to fund cancer research projects since it held its first fundraiser in 2009.

The group also runs support groups and publishes The Think Pink Guide: Living in Luxembourg with cancer.

The Luxembourg Institute of Health is a publicly-funded biomedical research organisation with roughly 380 employees and a budget of around €40m.