B+ Research Grants Announced
During a time when many people will be giving and receiving gifts, I am honored to share with you two gifts that OUR Foundation, The Andrew McDonough B+ Foundation, has just awarded. I can assure you that these gifts won’t be forgotten or broken by next week. These are gifts that could literally save thousands of children’s lives. I am very excited to share this news with you because you made it possible.
The Andrew McDonough B+ Foundation is pleased to announce $400,000 in research support to The Children’s Oncology Group. These grants will support two research efforts with $200,000 each.
As background, The Children’s Oncology Group (www.childrensoncologygroup.org) is the world’s largest organization devoted exclusively to childhood and adolescent cancer research. The Children’s Oncology Group (COG) unites more than 8,000 experts in childhood cancer at more than 200 leading children’s hospitals, universities, and cancer centers across North America, Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Europe in the fight against childhood cancer. Today, more than 90% of the13,500 children and adolescents diagnosed with cancer each year in the United States are cared for at COG member institutions. COG’s mission is to improve the cure rate and outcome for all children with cancer.
The first project that we are supporting is spearheaded by the Chair of The Children’s Oncology Group, renowned oncologist, Dr. Peter C. Adamson. Dr. Adamson is also the Chief of the Division
of Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. This project is called Project:EveryChild.
It is hard to discuss these two projects briefly, so please contact me if you’d like to learn more. Very basically, though, Project:EveryChild will develop a national repository of virtually every childhood cancer patient’s tumor or blood samples (with parental permission, of course). These samples would be housed in a repository at Nationwide/OSUHospital in Columbus, OH. While childhood cancer is considered ‘rare’, this has the potential to make the world smaller and greatly accelerate the learning – and thus developments and cures – on all types of childhood cancer.
The second project is under the direction of Dr. Andy Kolb. Dr. Kolb is the Chair of the COG Myeloid Committee and Director of the Nemours Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders.
This Committee is at a critical crossroads where a lot of great work is being developed and there is a tremendous amount of results (i.e. data) to sort through to both analyze the work but, more importantly, guide the direction of numerous future projects. In very simplistic terms, the Committee is doing a lot of great work and has mountains of information, much of which will be untapped unless there is the appropriate staffing to analyze it. Funding this request can significantly impact not one project but dozens of projects around the country and, conceivably, the world. I would be glad to discuss this project further as well.
We are very honored to partner with The COG, Peter, Andy, and all the folks who will benefit from our support. Some people think that we don’t need to support research because someone else – i.e. the government -will take care of that. That belief couldn’t be more wrong. Less than 4% of all federal cancer research funding goes to childhood cancer research. It may not touch your heart like some of our stories about the families we help, but without the research discoveries, we won’t plug the hole and the boat will continue to take on water forever!
Thank you very much for your support. Please keep all of these researchers in your prayers and let’s pray that see some discoveries really soon.
To all who celebrate it, Merry Christmas!!!
B+ 🙂
Ali & Andrew’s Dad