2025 – Sarah’s Pink Events fund a second research project and have allocated £25k over the next two years. A downpayment of £2503 has been made in November 2025 to start this funding.

As of October 2025, Hamza Ikram is the newly appointed Breast Surgery Research Fellow at St James’s University Hospital, undertaking a Doctorate in Medicine by Research (MD) at the University of Leeds, under the supervision of Dr James Thorne, Dr Milène Volpato and Mr Baek Kim.

Hamza completed his medical degree at Queen’s University Belfast and has since trained across Yorkshire, progressing through foundation, core surgical and now higher surgical training in General and Oncoplastic Breast Surgery. He is a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Medical and Healthcare Education, reflecting his passion for teaching and mentorship

His lab based research focuses on triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), an aggressive type of breast cancer that is often difficult to treat due to resistance to chemotherapy. The project explores how subtle differences in a protein called Liver X Receptor Alpha may affect how breast cancer cells respond to treatment. These molecular variants appear to influence how TNBC cells respond to chemotherapy, contributing to drug resistance in some patients. By understanding these molecular changes, Hamza aims to identify new therapeutic targets that could make chemotherapy more effective and less toxic for patients with TNBC.

Hamza is very grateful to Pink Events Breast Cancer Charity for supporting this vital research. The project will form the basis of his MD thesis and represents an important step towards his goal of becoming a consultant oncoplastic breast surgeon, dedicated to improving outcomes for patients.

2021 – Pink Events is funding much needed research

Pink Events are pleased to announce that we have agreed to fund some of the costs of the equipment and consumables for this research project at St James’s Hospital which will last two years at a total cost of £20k, after which time, the scientific findings will be published and delivered to high profile international and national scientific conferences.

Translational research is a type of research where discoveries made in the laboratory are transferred to the clinic setting. Many successful breast cancer treatments have been developed as a result of translation research, including Tamoxifen and Herceptin and these drugs have improved the outcome for patients.

However there is a subgroup of patients for whom these drugsare ineffective. For these patients with “triple negative” cancers there is an urgent need to investigate a way in which a particular molecular pathway can be targeted to improve response to chemotherapy and therefore patient survival. In addition, to give the patient smaller chemotherapy doses and reduce the side effects.

Leeds have proven expertise in breast cancer translational research, especially in the identification of cancer biomarkers and targetting molecular pathways which can be exploited to improve response to chemotherapy. Leeds has an excellent record of collaboration between scientists, surgeons, pathologists and oncologists.

Through their research they have identified a molecule which can be manipulated to improve the effectiveness of chemotherapy.

However, further research is required to study how this can be used in triple negative breast cancer patients where the cancer has spread. The Laboratory work will be carried out by the research fellow in the Breast Care unit at St James’s Hospital.

 

If you would like to make a donation to Pink Events and help fund this valuable research project then please follow the link to our Givey donations page. If you are a UK tax payer, please consider donating with Gift Aid as we can then claim back the income tax on your donation which means that for every £5 you give we can claim back an additional £1 from HMRC turning your £5 into £6.

Thank you all for your generosity.

 

Ritika Rampal (Research Fellow) – Career biography

My name is Ritika Rampal and I am the newly appointed breast surgery research fellow at the department of Breast surgery Department, St. James’s University Hospital. I will start my post in October 2021 for a period of two years.

Coming from Yorkshire, I have stayed local all my life from going to medical school at Hull York Medical School, doing a BSc degree in Clinical Anatomy at University of Leeds also doing my foundation training as a junior doctor in Leeds/Harrogate. I am currently a core surgical trainee in the Yorkshire and Humber deanery.  

I am very interested in breast surgery with the aspirations of becoming an oncoplastic breast surgeon in the future. I am also a keen academic and I truly believe health research improves patient outcomes greatly and is vital to the development of any health service.

I will be working on a lab based research project (supervised by Dr Tom Hughes and Mr Baek Kim) where we are going to be researching one of the molecules (called Mucin 17) involved in triple negative breast cancer and how it can be manipulated to improve the effectiveness of chemotherapy. Our previous research shows that the level of this molecule predicts patient’s long term survival and also facilitates cancer spread to sites beyond the breast (i.e. into armpit glands and at other distant sites).

We will therefore examine Mucin 17 expression in cancer cells in the armpit glands and distant sites to gain better understanding of how it facilitates cancer spread and whether different tissue environment surrounding cancer cells can influence their growth. We will use breast cancer cell models in the lab to test our hypothesis that adding drugs that block the action of Mucin 17 will result in improved effectiveness of chemotherapy. This has high transferable relevance for breast cancer patients as improved effectiveness of chemotherapy will result in improved survival with potential ability to offer lower chemotherapy drug dosages which will also result in reduced side effects of chemotherapy for patients.

I am grateful to the Pink Events charity for funding the lab based breast cancer research project and am very excited to start this. The thesis from this translational breast cancer research project will lead toward an award of an MD degree from University of Leeds, which will greatly enhance my career aspiration of becoming an academic consultant oncoplastic breast surgeon.

Thank you for your support and look forward to seeing you soon in order to provide updates on the research project.

Ritika Rampal
Breast Surgery research Fellow
Department of Breast Surgery
St. James’s University Hospital
Leeds