Cancer advocacy in the UK would probably not exist as it does today, were it not for the tireless efforts of Margaret (Maggie) Wilcox, who died on 9 December 2021. Maggie was born in Liverpool in 1942 and spent her professional career initially as a nurse and subsequently a health visitor. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1997 but made a good recovery after surgery, radiotherapy, and ten years of endocrine therapy.

She was a founding member of Independent Cancer Patients’ Voice (ICPV) and it was through this that many of us got to know and value Maggie as a skilled communicator who was one of the first patient voices to be heard in many clinical trials and related translational laboratory studies. Together with Adrienne Morgan, she was instrumental in setting up the ICPV VOICE (Vision on Information, Confidence & Engagement) course hosted by Barts Cancer Institute, which introduces patient advocates to the science behind breast cancer and provides them with an unparalleled opportunity to gain hands on experience of laboratory research. She was an accomplished author, presenting the patient view on many aspects of breast cancer, including the Marmot report, published in this journal, which explored the benefits and possible harms of breast screening [1]. She also published in The Lancet and Journal of Clinical Oncology amongst other journals with her publication output standing up to that of many academics.

Maggie received invitations to attend and speak at many academic conferences around the world and even as recently as 2019, when her health was starting to fail, travelled to Australia and New Zealand to do this. She was also a passionate supporter of biobanking, possibly because of her dismay that she had not been asked after her own breast cancer diagnosis if her tissue could be used in biomedical research. She was one of the patient voices behind the Breast Cancer Now Tissue Bank, serving on the Tissue Access Committee for many years and was proud to see how this fledging idea grew and prospered into the well-established biobank it is today. Her wise council and uncanny ability to ask the ‘elephant in the room’ question meant she was always the go-to person to invite to present the patient view on biobanking at many conferences and she did this with aplomb. She was rightly proud of her publication on the importance of lay advocacy at all levels of biobanking to ensure the patient was placed at the heart of this [2].

Maggie was also a major contributor to national audit, other governance initiatives and education. All these activities and more, meant she was the well-deserved recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award in Breast Cancer Patient Advocacy awarded at the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) 21st National Breast Cancer Trials Meeting in March 2019.

Maggie made immense contributions to breast cancer research and clinical trials and was a truly remarkable and inspirational lady who was widely admired and respected. She will be sadly missed by all of us who were fortunate enough to know her.