Sep 4, 2008 5:21 pm US/Eastern
'Stand Up To Cancer' Raises Much-Needed Money
BOSTON (WBZ) ―
Patients come from all over the world to be treated here in Boston because hospitals in Massachusetts are offering the latest advances in cancer treatment. But finding better ways to treat patients and save lives takes a lot of money.
Eleven-year-old Mikey was diagnosed with a brain tumor on his birthday. "Instead of celebrating my birthday it was a day of desperation."
"The prospects were not good, they basically told us he had three to six months to live," said Mikey's father Steve Czech.
To help Mikey and millions of patients like him, cancer researchers are trying to develop better treatments.
"Stand Up to Cancer" was designed to raise money for that life-saving research.
"Cancer is still the diagnosis people fear the most," said Dana-Farber Pres. Edward Benz. "People have been very generous but this puts such a strong public face, it creates a national agenda to take cancer down."
Dr. Phillip Sharp of MIT is the chair of the committee which will decide how to allocate the money raised by the landmark event. It will go to so-called research "dream teams" around the country. "We hope it would be a step toward moving therapies to patients as fast as possible."
The stand up to cancer funding will get to researchers faster because there will be less red tape and it will pay for high-risk projects that usually aren't so easily-funded. "Clearly pooling talent and access to patients, particularly for rare cancers would be a huge advance," said Dr. Benz.
"I think the Stand Up to Cancer funding will have a very large impact on the future of cancer research," said Dr. Sharp.
It now generally takes more than 10 years to get promising therapies into clinical trials and researchers are hoping that this money raised by Friday's event will help jump-start the process.
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