Member Article

St Mark's Chairman Steps Down Leaving Lasting Legacy

On 7th December, Michael Liebreich ended his 10-year tenure as Chair of St Mark’s Hospital Foundation, having led its transformation into a proactive fundraising charity with a track record in supporting world-leading research into bowel disease.

On becoming a Trustee of St Mark’s Hospital Foundation in 2002, Michael noted the potential for the Hospital to grow as a leading hub for translational research – the rapid development and dissemination of new treatments and better ways of managing bowel disease. However, he realised that for this far-reaching vision to become a reality, a restructure needed to take place, in order to attract sizeable donations from trusts, foundations, private individuals and corporations.

Michael assumed the position of Chairman in 2007, and launched a major re-shuffle. He invited a number of experienced business-people onto the board, retaining two medical trustees to represent the medical staff at the hospital and working closely with the Clinical Director and Dean. He set up a ‘seed-corn’ facility to fund preparatory work on major projects, to help researchers ready themselves for larger-scale fundraising efforts.

These efforts resulted in an increase in annual funds raised from around £0.5million to around £2million per annum, and so helped researchers at St Mark’s Hospital undertake a number of ground-breaking projects, including the following:

• FLEX - minimally invasive surgery for early stage bowel cancer. • HIPEC treatment - for advanced bowel cancer that uses a novel approach that gives patients hope of surviving advanced cancer, where otherwise all that would be available to them is end of life care. • BICYCLE - perioperative programme to get patients fit for cancer surgery, before, during and after the surgery. • TASER and SPEEDBOAT - minimally invasive colonoscopic treatment of pre-cancerous and large polyps that otherwise would have required surgery and the possibility of a stoma bag. • PERFECTs project - aims to raise the standards of virtual colonoscopy diagnosis and treatment of bowel cancer for weak and frail patients. • Vitamin D - investigation into the efficacy of super-doses of vitamin D in the treatment of Crohn’s disease.

One of Michael’s most important initiatives whilst chairing St Mark’s Hospital Foundation was to support the launch of St Mark’s Institute for Bowel Disease. This consists of six centres of excellence for research and education: the Centre for Early Diagnosis of Colorectal Disease; the Centre for the Treatment of Inflammatory Bowel Disease; the Centre for Anorectal Research; the Centre for Minimally Invasive Surgery; the Centre for the Treatment of Advanced Cancer; and the Centre for Patient Safety and Quality of Care.

Over the past two years St Mark’s Institute for Bowel Disease has assembled research teams around each of these Centres, ensuring that they have the required critical mass to play leading roles in international research collaborations. St Mark’s Hospital Foundation is now helping each Centre to secure hardware and technology, including robotics, imaging and endoscopic equipment. At a later date, the intention is for the Foundation to help raise funds for a purpose-built building for the Institute.

During a Board of Trustees meeting on 7th December, Michael handed over the Chair of St Mark’s Hospital Foundation to Sir Tom Troubridge, who joined the board of St Mark’s Hospital Foundation early this year.

Michael Liebreich says: “During my 10 years as Chairman at St Mark’s Hospital Foundation, I pushed the St Mark’s researchers to be ambitious, and committed the Foundation to supporting them. The Foundation is now an organisation focused on securing funding for St Mark’s Hospital and the Institute for Bowel Disease to do research that will move us one step closer to a future free from bowel disease.

“When I joined as a Trustee, St Mark’s Hospital was diamond in the rough – with a 180-year history of excellence in research and education, but punching below its weight in terms of fundraising. I believe the re-structure I pushed through during my tenure as Chair has already helped St Mark’s Hospital remain at the forefront of its field, and paved the way for more vital research to be done.

“I am confident that the Foundation’s next Chairman, Tom Troubridge, working with the other Trustees and the fantastic staff at St Mark’s Hospital and Foundation, will be able to build on the current momentum – in particular completing the funding for our most important current project, the surgical robot.”

Tom Troubridge says: “I am delighted to be taking over as Chairman of St Mark’s Hospital Foundation. Michael has done a fantastic job during his tenure, in particular, the launch of the Institute for Bowel Disease. I am taking over my role at the same time as a new Clinical Director, Omar Faiz, is appointed to St Mark’s and we plan to look together at how we can take out fundraising of important research projects to greater success in partnership with the NHS Trust. We have just commenced our largest fundraising to date of some £2 million for a surgical robot which will bring much needed and state of the art expertise to St Marks.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Scott Barrett .