Journal of IiMER Volume 10 Issue 1 The charity has received donations and support from many different countries around the world. After an impressive campaign lasting a year, in August 2014 the charity secured the initial target amount (with pledges) of £350,000. To allow the promising B-cell study into ME to continue, and as part of the overall research portfolio that Invest in ME has with UCL and the consultants from Epsom and St Helier University Hospital and UCLH, the charity committed itself to fund a new PhD studentship at UCL that began in 2015. The charity organised and held its 9th annual international research conference – with the sub-title of Synergising Research into ME – illustrating the objectives of the charity in organising and facilitating international collaboration in research into ME. Following the IIMEC9 international conference the charity agreed in principle to fund further PhD students at UEA/IFR and also two intercalating medical students who would assist in the research underway at UEA/IFR. One student spent time at Cornell University with Professor Maureen Hanson and one at Oxford University under the guidance of Professor Angela Vincent. The charity also formed an Advisory Board to help the charity plan a strategy for research and provide advice on what research to fund. We are very pleased to have renowned researchers from UEA, IFR, Oxford and UCL in our Advisory Board. In 2015 the charity made submissions for the NIH Pathways to Prevention Report (P2P). We also made an analysis of the Institute of Medicine June 2016 (IOM) “Beyond Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Redefining an Illness” report. We continued our advocacy and support for people with ME by formally complaining to the BBC regarding poorly researched and unbalanced reporting. The BBC to its shame failed to respond to any of the complaints made – underlining the fact that although we had begun to change the research landscape it was still difficult to change the practices of a publicly-funded establishment organisation that is unaccountable regarding the truth. One can bring a horse to water but the horse has to be thirsty to drink. 2015 saw the fifth international biomedical research Colloquium and our tenth international ME conference. And both events were the best to date. A landmark achieved. Over ten years only a small proportion of the work that the charity and its supporters has performed can be mentioned. And in truth we never imagined that it would take so much effort to make the changes now being seen. Yet we enter a new decade of Invest in ME research – better equipped than ten years ago, more knowledgeable of the disease itself and as passionate as ever to produce a solution which will finally see an end to the misery which people with ME and their families have been forced to endure for the last two decades or more. Invest in ME (Charity Nr. 1114035) www.investinme.org Page 18 of 77
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