Join us to have some fun – and be a hero for kids with cancer!We are back at Primanti Brothers to shave heads and raise funds. Want to skip the free haircut, consider volunteering or just giving a few bucks.
Locally, our very own Dr. Erica Braverman is a St. Baldrick's Fellow, which means your dollars are funding her life-saving research with UPMC Children's Hospital. Here is a summary of how your dollars are being spent for a project over the last 2.5 years:
There
are new cancer therapies in which a patient's own immune system is retrained to
fight against their cancer. In one of these therapies, known as CAR-T cells, a patient's
immune cells are removed from the bloodstream and reprogrammed to target and
attack their cancer when the cells are returned to the body. While this therapy
has shown great promise, there are still situations, especially with very
high-risk cancers, where it does not work. One significant issue that exists
with this treatment is that the retrained immune cells do not always stick
around after being given back to the patient, which allows the cancer to
outlast the therapy and come back. We know that once cancers have resisted a
treatment once, it is difficult to use the same treatment again. In this
proposal, I am finding ways to alter tumor-targeting immune cells to make them
last longer when they are given back to patients, ultimately allowing for a
long-term cure for their cancer without the need for further treatment.
Children, teens and even infants are diagnosed with cancer every day, but donations are drastically down for research to find cures. We can change that – and save lives!
Our event will speed the search for cures, supporting the largest charitable funder of childhood cancer research grants. Research is hope, and you can give kids that hope.
Sign up to shave your head or to raise money another way. Can’t join us? Please make a generous donation to give kids the long, healthy lives they deserve.
