Rejoin our UVA for O team to support the Fighting Osteosarcoma Together Super Grant, a $1.5M research grant designed to draw more researchers to Osteosarcoma and fuel new efforts and hope.

Our community came together over five years ago when friend and UVA law classmate Mike Egge’s daughter Olivia was diagnosed with this aggressive form of bone cancer – a cancer that disproportionally impacts children and adolescents. There had been no advance in treatment for osteosarcoma since the advent of highly toxic chemotherapy over forty years ago, and survival rates for metastatic osteosarcoma had not improved.

In response to her story, John Varney’s and those of hundreds of other children and families faced with this devastating disease, our UVA for O team raised nearly $50,000 towards a $1.5 million grant to fund new research to find new treatments. The grant was awarded to Dr. Alex Hung to advance the effectiveness of immunotherapies against osteosarcoma. It led to three different clinical trial candidates, with two clinical trials in progress and a third trial the works. As Dr. Hung has said, “these novel immunotherapies give us unprecedented opportunity to apply these strategies to treat pediatric patients affected by the most devastating solid tumor cancers. I truly believe a new efficacious therapy for metastatic osteosarcoma is not far into the future.”

Let’s make that future together. Through your efforts we have made great progress and have great momentum. With your continued help we can bring new researchers and novel therapies into this fight. Our team goal is to raise $50,000 to fund another $1.5 million research grant to rapidly translate research into a clinical trial that will benefit patients within three years. Thirty-nine applicants submitted quality proposals and the grant recipient will be announced within the next few weeks.

Thank you for making a difference!