It is a pleasure to update you on recent activities of the British Oncological Association.  This year we continued to consolidate our position in Oncology Education and dissemination of information for a broad range of oncology specialties.  In October we are continuing our collaboration with the NCRI and have a joint session with the British Oncological Association and the Royal College of Radiologists at this large national scientific meeting.  This year the title chosen for our session is "molecular imaging for oncology" as an emerging area of interest for many oncological sub-specialities.  We are currently assembling an international body of speakers and I am sure that this session will be of great interest to our membership.  As with last year we have also offered to host two "Meet the Professor" sessions in the early morning on the Monday and Tuesday of the meeting as these were very popular last year.  For further information about the BOA sessions at the NCRI meeting in Birmingham please see www.ncri.org.uk/ncriconference/

The BOA continue to support the Pfizer Excellence in Oncology awards and this time the award ceremony will be on the Tuesday evening of the NCRI meeting.  There will be press coverage of the different categories of awards, which will be starting early in the spring and I would encourage any members to consider putting themselves forward for this fun evening.

The BOA continue to collaborate with other professional groups to bring to you meetings of interest to the speciality and I am grateful to Rob Coleman for again organising the late effects meeting in conjunction with the Society of Endocrinology on 8th February 2008, which was highly successful and also to Ros Eeles and Jeff Tobias for organising the meeting on cancer prevention on 4th February 2008, which went so well.

I look forward to seeing you all at the events in the coming year.

Chris Nutting
President British Oncological Association