5th & 6th of April 2025
VENUE: Stanton House Hotel
Stanton Fitzwarren, Wiltshire, SN6 7SD
Enquiries & ticket sales: Please email beesandmushrooms@gmail.com
Full 2 day event £225.00 / UKIMPR Member £185.00 / Student or unwaged household £165.00
(Ticket price includes all talks, workshops and Mushroom ID walk, plus tea & coffee. Excludes travel, accommodation and food).
A small selection of the medicinal mushrooms found in Britain and Ireland:
(l to r) Liberty cap, Psilocybe semilanceata (taken by Arp – creative commons license 3.0), turkey tail, Trametes versicolor, fly agaric, Amanita muscaria, red-belted polypore, Fomitopsis pinicola.
SPEAKERS:AT THE 2023 CONFERENCE WERE
Robert dale rogers bsc rh(ahg) ficn
medicinal mushrooms -the human clinical trials
Western biomedicine and oncology have long claimed that mushrooms are not medicinal. In fact, oncologists often advise their patients undergoing chemotherapy or radiation for cancer to abstain from any supplements.
His published works include:
The Fungal Pharmacy: The Complete Guide to Medicinal Mushrooms and Lichens of North America (2011).
Medicinal Mushrooms: The Human Clinical Trials (2020).
Psilocybin Mushrooms: The Magic, Science and Research (2021).
Mushroom Medicine: The Future of Functional Fungi (2022).
Web page: //herbalccha.org/council-of-elders/robert-rogers-alberta/
dr ayman daba, CChem FNACB
a Review of mushrooms as anticancer therapeutics and the contribution of Tom Volk to mycology
Dr. Ayman Daba has worked in the field of exploring mushrooms as anti-cancer therapeutics for 32 years and has had 25 peer reviewed papers published on this subject. This talk will discuss the methodologies employed and some of the discoveries that have been made over this period, as well as highlighting the need for more research.
By his own admission, Dr Daba’s studies have led him to fall in love with mushrooms – not only for their healing properties but because they are so fascinating on many different levels! As his enthusiasm rubbed off, people have come to know him as “the Mushroom Man“. Ayman was a great friend and colleague of world renowned professor and mycologist Tom Volk, a figure who will doubtless have influenced many of our delegates and speakers since the inception of the conference in 2015. Dr. Daba will be giving his talk this year in honour of Tom, who, leaving the great legacy of his work, travelled to the great mycelium dreaming in November 2022,.
Dr Daba is a Fellow of the National Academy of Clinical Biochemistry, a Career Ambassador for the American Society of Clinical Pathology and has been awarded Chartered Chemist Status by the Royal Society of Chemistry, London. He works as a clinical lab director and scientist at Abbott Diagnostics USA. He studied at the College of Science, University of Ain Shames, in the Department of Biochemistry and RUSH University Hospital. He did his master’s thesis and followed with a doctorate degree on the novel anticancer and medicinal values of mushrooms. Dr. Daba served as the head of the pharmaceutical bioproduct department at the National Research Institute in Alexandria, Egypt, and was awarded a scholarship from the International Union Against Cancer (Switzerland), then completing a postdoctoral fellowship in the Aarhus Commune Hospital, Denmark. Daba was a Fulbright Scholarship at the Wisconsin Lacrosse working in scaling up of mushroom mycelia in bioreactors. He also obtained a post doc fellow at Roswell Park Cancer Hospital Buffalo NY where he was able to study the structural analyses of mushroom polysaccharides.
Website: //themushroommedicineman.com/
Cristina Cromer
FROM THE BROWN EARTH, TO THE BROWN BOTTLE : MAKING THE LINK AND ENSURING THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE LAND AND THE MEDICINE
martin powell
ratios, additives and percentages: a look at the claims made for mushroom products
In this talk, Martin will be guiding us to take a second look at the claims made for mushroom products and how they relate to different raw materials, production processes and testing methodologies. What actually goes on in the factory and what to understand from claimed percentages of active constituents, extraction ratios and terms like “dual-extraction”, “double extracted” or “triple extracted”? What are the implications for the compounds present, and for the medicinal properties of the finished product?
Martin Powell, MRCHM, BSc Hons (Biochemistry), is a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine, a biochemist and the author of “Medicinal Mushrooms, The Essential Guide” (2013) and “Medicinal Mushrooms – A Clinical Guide”. Martin lectured at the University of Westminster for 13 years, during which he helped to set up the MSc programme in Chinese Herbal Medicine. He has worked as a consultant to a number of companies in the natural products industry and is a recognised authority on Medicinal Mushrooms. Martin has also worked with leading clinics to develop integrative treatments for cancer and other chronic health conditions. He is an Honorary Fellow of the UKI Mycotherapy Practitioners Register.
Website: //www.martinpowell.net
ben gibson
working with the mysterious cordyceps mushroom
In this talk, Ben will be telling us about his work cultivating Cordyceps militaris, the scarlet caterpillar club – a curious fungus to grow given that its natural host is an insect.
Fred GilLam
Studies on the benefits of mushroom nutrition: what recent studies show and are the benefits available to all?
A seeming plethora of papers have recently been published appearing to show associations between mushroom consumption and various positive health outcomes. These include improvements in diabetes, mild cognitive impairment, cancer statistics and all cause mortality, to name a few. Fred will be taking up the story and investigating what may lay behind these apparent trends, discussing the limitations and what these studies may be unable to show. “Can we, as the general public, use and benefit directly from this information, and if so then how?”
Fred is the founder of the UKI Mycotherapy Practitioners Register and tutor on the course Exploring the Healing Potential of Medicinal Mushrooms. He is the author of Poisonous Plants in Great Britain and a faculty member / visiting lecturer at Excelsior Herbal Apprenticeships. Fred has delivered papers on ethnobotany and medicinal mushrooms to the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, and has had articles published in The Herbalist, NIMH Power of Plants magazine, The Journal of the International Register of Consultant Herbalists, and ‘Mushroom’ magazine. He has a special interest in Immunology and Integrative Medicine, and together with his partner Natascha, runs a community herbal dispensary in Wiltshire.
Websites: //www.thewildsideoflife.co.uk / www.ukimpr.ie
Other Highlights include:
Research news headlines, presented by Fred Gillam & Natascha Kenyon…
Exploring Recent Clinical Trials and Research Papers – Fred & Natascha will present a news summary from recently published trials, reviews, metastudies and laboratory studies involving medicinal mushrooms.
Sunday afternoon fungus foray
This will be led by the field mycologists present, who will take us on a fungus foray around the large woodland country park that comprise the Stanton Park estate, looking for medicinal fungi.
mushroom log innoculation
2 Mushroom Log Inoculation workshops will be facilitated by James Scrivens of Coed Talylan land trust in the Brecon Beacons, Wales.
James uses permaculture design practices and deep-bed log cultivation systems that he has integrated into the sustainable management of the broad-leaved semi-natural woodland where he lives and works. James will tell us about the work of creating fungal refugia and teach us all how to inoculate logs with turkey tail mushroom spawn, which we can then take home for fruiting!
BOOKING YOUR PLACE – WE ARE OPEN FOR BOOKINGS NOW!!
Enquiries & ticket sales: Please email beesandmushrooms@gmail.com
Full delegate ticket £225.00
UKIMPR Member £180.00
Student / fully unwaged household £165.00
Day ticket (limited number available) £120.00
THE 2023 CONFERENCE – DETAILS
Stanton House Hotel, our venue for the weekend, is set within 183 acres of mature landscaped parkland and ancient woodland, providing the ideal setting for our Sunday Medicinal Mushroom ID Walk at the conference!
THE FOYER MARKET
Our foyer market will once again have a range of dried mushrooms, fresh mushrooms, book signings and all mushroom related paraphernalia. We regret that we do not allow formulated / processed mushroom products for sale.
REFRESHMENTS & FOOD
Tea and coffee will be provided in the scheduled breaks on both days of the conference.
Food is not included in the price of entry to the conference, but the restaurant at the venue will be providing a range of meals to suit all tastes. Orders for meals will be taken in advance during the mid-morning break to allow the kitchen to process them in time, so that the timing of the afternoon programme will not be adversely affected. You are also welcome to bring a packed lunch to consume in the conference hall as an alternative to the regular hotel menu, on either of the days.
Note: Only a limited range of special dietary requirements can be catered for in the restaurant due to the capacity of the kitchen at a large event such as this. Please be patient with the restaurant staff at our special event.
ACCOMMODATION
For those who wish to stay at the hotel during the conference, the venue has rooms available at a special conference delegates’ rate. There are also excellent B&B’s and hotels in the locality. Note: All rooms at the venue MUST be vacated by 10.00 AM prompt on the day of departure and there is a strict no smoking policy inside the venue and hotel rooms.
Kofuki saru no koshikake, the Artist’s fungus,
Ganoderma applanatum
These cousins of the popular reishi mushroom contain more than 400 constituents, including many of the active triterpenes found in reishi. With a long history of medicinal use throughout Asia, including both China and Japan, the properties are regarded as hepatoprotective, immune modulating, anti-biotic, anti-cancer, hypoglycaemic and anti-oxidant.
About The UKI Medicinal Mushrooms Conference
New information about fungi that will change the way we look at health and the biology of living systems is emerging at what seems to be an ever increasing rate and an industry has grown up around it. However, the UKI Medicinal Mushrooms Conference is proud to be an independent conference.
We receive no sponsorship and do not promote the products of nutraceutical, pharmaceutical or processed mushroom product manufacturers.
Our mission is to relay current discoveries in the world of medicinal mycology to the grass-roots of health care practitioners, academics, citizen scientists and citizens everywhere, for the combined benefit of humankind and global ecology. Though our speakers may bring their valuable knowledge and experience from the commercial sector with them, we maintain strict independence (unlike some other conferences which can become the showcases for product promotion).
Our priority is to promote the spread of credible knowledge about medicinal fungi, throughout society, in a spirit of resourceful usefulness and academic brilliance that will be of benefit to all.
CPD: For healthcare practitioners, a CPD Certificate of Attendance (15 hours) will be available after the conference, if requested in advance.
