For everyone
For those who didn’t come home. For everyone who will, thanks to your donation.
Going into hospital with an infection is frightening for anyone with cystic fibrosis (CF). The devastating reality is that some people never get to come home again.
Research has come a long way, but it’s not enough. That’s why we’re funding researchers like Professor Martin Welch and Professor Jane Davies – scientists working to unlock better treatments for CF infections.
With your support, we can find more answers. Will you donate today to help ensure more people come home from hospital?
Chloe’s story
Chloe was bright, creative, and full of life. Despite a childhood spent in and out of hospital, she earned a degree in English Literature and secured her dream job at 23. But before she could start work, a chest infection took hold. Chloe went into hospital – but she didn’t come home.
Her parents, Tom and Grace, never got to see her live a full life. She never had the chance to try new treatments like Kaftrio. They don’t want other families to experience the same heartbreak.
By funding research, we can protect more families from the impact of CF infections. Please donate today to support life-changing research.
Bob’s story
Like Chloe, Bob was diagnosed with CF as a baby. He thrived, went to university, and met his wife, Claire. For years, his CF was manageable, but after becoming a parent, he developed a serious chest infection. Bob spent six months in hospital fighting for his life.
Unlike Chloe, Bob benefited from recent CF research. Thanks to advancements in treatment, he came home to his family. Today, he’s living a great life – made possible by people like you.
Will you help give others the same chance? Donate today and help fund groundbreaking CF research.
Venture and Innovation Awards: Maximising your impact
Collaboration drives life-changing CF research. Our Venture and Innovation Awards (VIAs) encourage researchers to develop new treatments and improve lives.
For every £1 donated, an additional £5 has been matched by other partners. Your donation could fund future VIAs, helping more people with CF come home.
Leading research: Professors Martin Welch and Jane Davies
With VIA funding, Professors Welch and Davies are driving critical CF research.
Professor Martin Welch – Understanding the strains that stop people coming home
This could improve existing treatments for CF lung infections in the future.
– Professor Welch
Big breakthroughs in CF research often happen at microscopic levels. Professor Martin Welch’s work at the University of Cambridge is no exception – he’s already discovered startling new insights into the biology of the CF microbiome.
CF research is complicated. There’s a huge range of bugs in the lungs of people with CF that we’ve been unable to study deeply to discover how they interact to cause infection.
Professor Welch and his team have developed a laboratory model that can study the effects of different disease-causing bugs inside the lungs, replicating the conditions in people with CF more closely than ever.
Now, with funding from a VIA and Cystic Fibrosis Trust supporters like you, the team will use this model to study hard-to-treat strains of Pseudomonas – a common cause of lung infections in people with CF.
This could help us understand why they cause such serious infections and help more people live a life unlimited.
It’s the actions we take today that will determine what it means to live with CF in the future. If you can help fund CF research like Professor Welch’s today, please do.
Professor Jane Davies – Can an MS drug fight the most resistant strains?
The VIA funding from the Trust is fantastic news. I hope our research will benefit as many people with CF as possible.
– Professor Davies
In recent years, we’ve seen a rise in infections from antibiotic-resistant bacteria—making new treatments urgently needed. This includes Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacteria that infects almost two in three people with CF by young adulthood. Its resistance makes lung infections incredibly difficult to treat and leads to more time spent in hospital, away from loved ones.
Thanks to previous Cystic Fibrosis Trust funding, Professor Jane Davies and her team collaborated with researchers at Aarhus University and a biotech company to show the potential benefits of a drug already used to treat multiple sclerosis (MS). Their research found that this drug could increase the effectiveness of antibiotics when used to treat infections.
Now, further work is taking place with funding from LifeArc, a not-for-profit medical research organisation, to understand how a combination of medicines could be used.
To build on these findings, we’ve awarded a VIA to assess the impact of an MS drug against a broader range of CF bacteria. Our funding is also helping researchers explore whether the drug might work on infections caused by the fungus Aspergillus fumigatus.
This research is moving rapidly, and every positive finding could mean more people get to come home from hospital – or even avoid being admitted in the first place. Help us fund research into more effective treatments for everyone with CF.
2025 and beyond: A future without limits
We’ve awarded over 100 VIAs to advance CF research. These collaborative grants help tackle lung infections, antimicrobial resistance, and other challenges.
By donating, you can:
- support pioneering research
- help people with CF stay out of hospital
- change what it means to live with CF forever
Donate today
This is your chance to honour those we’ve lost, like Chloe, and create better outcomes for everyone with CF. Imagine what we could achieve together.
For Chloe. For Bob. For everyone affected by CF – please donate today.
You might also be interested in
Funding research
Thanks to the generosity and commitment of our incredible community, we are able to fund ground-breaking research into vital topics that are affecting people with cystic fibrosis (CF) today.
Our impact
Read our Annual Reports and find out more about the difference you help us make.
What is CF?
Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a genetic condition affecting over 11,000 people in the UK. You are born with CF and cannot catch it later in life, but one in 25 of us carries the faulty gene that causes it, usually without knowing.