James took on this mammoth challenge in support of his son, Fergus, who was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease when he was only five years old.

The Prior family raised more than £100,000 for our research fund in 2014 and we have worked with scientists at Addenbrookes Hospital and the University of Cambridge to use these funds to help unlock a further £1 million grant for research.

The money will be used to develop a centralised database of 25,000 IBD patients that will contain the clinical and genetic information from patients and will significantly advance understanding about the causes and treatments of IBD.

We strive to secure the most from our available research grants and we fund smaller pilot research projects that can then be scaled up, or we invest in research that requires 'start up' funding in order to attract more funding from other organisations, as in this case.

This is excellent news and we are very grateful to the Prior family for raising such a large sum to support this important research.

We will keep you updated as the research progresses.