The Azaylia Childhood Cancer PhD Fund

The Azaylia Childhood Cancer PhD program was created in September 2022 to fund the next generation of childhood cancer specialised talent, and their research.

Childhood cancer is the number one killer of children under the age of 15 in the UK, yet shockingly, it receives less than 3% of cancer research funding from our institutions. This program is our biggest opportunity to have a game-changing impact on childhood cancer as it addresses two problems caused by this systemic underfunding:

The lack of research in prevention, early diagnosis, and new treatments for childhood cancer, and;

The lack of new talent specialised in childhood cancer.

The first two PhDs candidates funded by The Azaylia Foundation were through a partnership with the University of Birmingham and Birmingham Children’s Hospital. We donated £285,000 which was match-funded by them in order to double our impact and fund two Clinical PhD scholarships. Our third PhD scholarship went to Oxford University in September 2023, donating an additional £118,000.

Over the next five years, we aim to fund 20 PhDs through this program, involving universities and hospitals across the nation - achieving this would be a game-changer at the UK level. This ambition will require us to raise around £3M through a combination of crowdfunding, corporate and institutional donations, and brand sponsorship.

This campaign is our next step towards that ambition. We are looking to raise £300,000 so we can fund the next two childhood cancer PhDs, and their research, which would bring our total to 5 PhD scholarships in just over a year.