Community Corner

Fund A Cure Makes Donation To Thomas Jefferson University Hospital

The $30,000 donation was raised through the annual Run Over Cancer 5K held every July in Newtown.

 

The Newtown-based nonprofit Fund A Cure for Pancreatic Cancer has donated $30,000 to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital’s Pancreatic Cancer Surgical Research Fund.

The $30,000 was raised through the annual Run Over Cancer 5K held every July in Newtown. This year’s donation represents a 100 percent increase from last year's donation of $15,000.  Since 2009, Fund A Cure for Pancreatic Cancer has donated a total of $55,000 to the pancreatic cancer research team at Jefferson.

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On Nov. 10, Fund A Cure board members of visited the hospital’s pancreatic cancer research team, led by Dr. Charles Yeo and Dr. Jonathan Brody, and presented the check.  November was Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month. 

"The money Fund A Cure for Pancreatic Cancer has provided to us will allow us to validate our exciting discovery in the laboratory to more relevant pre-clinical and clinical settings,” said Dr. Brody.  “Because of this money, we can do the next step experiments that could define a novel, highly potent and promising new treatment for pancreatic cancer patients.”

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Fund A Cure for Pancreatic Cancer Chairman Robert Ciervo said the organization is excited about the work being done at the hospital. “The type of work being done by Dr. Brody is what we need to be occurring in thousands of labs across the world, but it unfortunately is not due to an extreme lack of funding"

"While we are grateful for the wonderful work at Jefferson we also hope that our elected leaders in Washington, D.C. realize that they must properly fund pancreatic cancer research in order for cures to be found,” Ciervo added.  “It is unconscionable to many of us that the National Cancer Institute, which has a nearly $5 billion budget, only allocates 2 percent of its funding towards pancreatic cancer research.

Ciervo added that pancreatic cancer has just a 1 percent long-term survival rate. “With the recent passing of Steve Jobs to this dreaded disease it is time to Fund A Cure,” Ciervo said.


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