Test tubes and microscopes don’t normally excite me unless, of course, the tubes are filled with liquid gold or the scopes are focused on diamonds.
However, I have to admit the equipment in staff scientist Sean Yoder’s lab held special appeal for me despite its lack of glitter.
A group of friends and me were taking a tour of the Don and Erika Wallace Comprehensive Breast Program at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in Tampa, getting a dumb-downed explanation of how the money we raised from last year’s Project Cure was being used.
Project Cure is our pie-in-the-sky dream of wiping out breast cancer. However, we discovered our dream might not be quite so out of reach anymore.
Four years ago we decided to raise money for breast cancer research after three young mothers at our children’s school, St. Stephen Catholic School in Riverview, died from the disease. Two of the mothers had children in my son’s class and the third was the wife of the music and art teacher.
Determined to take action, we hosted a three-day, 60-mile walk along Natures Way in Bloomingdale East as well as a children’s walk and festival at the school. We sold pink baseball caps decorated with the breast cancer signature ribbon, jewelry, signed up sponsors for the walks, solicited donations, even stood on street corners with jars during the three-day walk.
Frankly, we were a bit stunned to discover we’d raised $26,000 during the first-time effort. There were six of us in the core group and none of us had ever tackled a major fundraiser before. We just knew that we had lost too many friends to this terrible disease and needed to take action, to ease our sense of helplessness and grief, to give meaning to our friends’ deaths and to show their children they did not die in vain.
Heck, I was just happy I completed all 60 miles.
It wasn’t until July that I discovered the real impact we made. That’s when Moffitt arranged a tour for us including lunch with Dr. Bradford Carter, a cancer surgeon, professor of oncology surgery and leader of the Don and Erika Wallace Comprehensive Breast Program.
He’s also my personal hero. I saw him speak at a breast cancer fundraiser hosted by the Lightning Foundation and the Greater Brandon Community Foundation at Bell Shoals Baptist Church in 2005, and was impressed by the research he spoke of that was taking place at Moffitt. I hadn’t realized such groundbreaking studies were occurring in our own back yard.
In fact, Moffitt is ranked third in research and treatment in the country by the National Cancer Institute and has 13 clinical programs studying different types of cancer including the Don & Erika Wallace program.
When we discovered we could raise funds that would all go to research, not administrative costs or overhead, we agreed that Moffitt should be our benefactor.
We knew our money was in good hands when we turned it over to Shirley Fessell. She not only works for the foundation but happens to be a parishioner at St. Stephen Catholic Church. Ironically, we didn’t meet her until after we chose the foundation as our charity.
The researchers at the foundation, though, will tell you that Shirley didn’t mince words when she handed them our hard-earned treasure.
“This is the Lord’s money,” she told them solemnly. “It has to be used for something special.”
It just so happened Moffitt researchers had something special in need of funding.
Dr. Pam Munster, a member of Moffitt’s Division of Experimental Therapeutics and Breast Oncology, was short $10,000 to complete an important Phase I clinical trial. Munster is looking at women’s DNA histories and how they can be used to optimize the benefits of chemotherapy for breast cancer.
Right now, doctors blast cancer patients with chemo, hoping the chemo will find the cancer cells. However, only 15 out of 100 patients actually benefit from the treatment.
Munster is trying to figure out how to unravel each patient’s DNA so doctors can target the cancer cells and leave the healthy cells alone.
The study goes along with Moffitt’s new partnership with Merck & Co. Inc., which is supplying the technology for Moffitt to collect the DNA samples of 50,000 patients and identify the genetic markers, allowing doctors to personalize cancer therapy for all patients. That’s what Yoder was doing the day of our tour. He was examining all these miniscule microarrays through the microscope, studying their genome structure.
So, according to Carter, a group of women with little more than luck and good intentions managed to help complete an important Phase I clinical trial and help begin the second phase. I’d say that’s better than liquid gold or diamonds.
“Your contribution made a huge impact,” said Carter, and I don’t think he was just humoring us because he added that competition for research dollars from the National Institute of Health, the American Cancer Society and other groups is pretty fierce. To be handed 26,000 unfettered dollars is a coup.
I got the distinct impression that he wanted us to go back and raise more money.
So that’s what we’re doing for the fourth year. To date, we’ve raised more than $70,000. We’re inviting all churches in the community to form teams and join us for the fourth annual Project Cure walk Nov. 13-15. Although it’s a three-day, 60-mile walk, participants are free to walk any distance they feel comfortable and to raise as much money as they can. There is no requirement to raise a minimum amount of money.
Registration forms are available at www.projectcure.ststephencatholic.org.
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