The Choice is Yours

One of the things I love most about Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation is that you get to pick where you want your donation to go. Have a specific cancer you want to fight? Want to support the travel fund, so that families can afford to make all the doctors appointments? How about supporting epidemology grants --  studying how, when and where diseases and cancers occur?

The choice is yours. You decide where your money goes. You choose how to help.

Here is an example of how ALSF is helping the medical community:

Project Title: Developing Immune-modulatory Strategies Against Primary and Metastatic Tumors in the Central Nervous System
Institution: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio
Grant Type: Innovation Award ($250,000)

"Your generous support for initiatives such as our research program is critical in a time when funding for childhood cancer is quite challenging."  - Alex Huang, MD, PhD

Dr. Huang and his team are embarking on a new research direction that is looking at using a childhood cancer patient's immune system to fight brain tumors, specifically medulloblastoma. Medulloblastoma is the most common malignant brain tumor in children and despite aggressive therapy consisting of surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and bone marrow transplantation, survival in high-risk medulloblastoma patients is only about 60%.

Dr. Huang's novel idea is to study how brain tumors "fool" a child's immune system and how they can harness the power of the immune system to actually fight the brain tumors. Specifically, they're studying the effects of modulating VCAM-1, a novel surface target of metastatic and aggressive tumors on tumor propagation and the outcome of associated immune responses. They are testing whether targeting VCAM-1 activity in vivo can be efficacious in combating tumors that have found sanctuary in the central nervous system.

If successful, findings from the study will have a huge impact across a wide spectrum of scientific arenas, help to develop targeted therapy, and significantly improve upon the outcome and quality-of-life measures in children suffering from the devastating disease.

I ask you to help in whatever way you can, however you see fit, by donating here: http://www.alexslemonade.org/mypage/113151