Dear Friends,
On August 7-8th, Team Samantha will ride again in the 2010 Pan Mass Challenge. Team Samantha is named in honor Samantha Janower, who was diagnosed with a brain tumor at the age of three and is the daughter of our good friends, Cindy and Andrew Janower (AJ).
Since being diagnosed six years ago, Samantha has endured neuro-surgery and over 27 months of chemotherapy. While her tumor has been stable since she finished chemo eighteen months ago, she is highly likely to need more treatment at some point in the future, and having now been through the first two front-line protocols for her disease, our next decision is likely to be the toughest yet -- the remaining alternatives are largely unproven and can be highly toxic, often with permanent long term adverse side-effects.
Historically, JPAs and related tumors, despite being the most common form of solid tissue cancer in children, were orphans in the cancer research field -- a perpetual lack of funding severely dampened researcher interest in the disease, creating a doom loop that many in the field considered impossible to break. Since then, with your help, we've made huge strides in getting a growing number of scientists to pay closer attention to this silent killer.
Over the past three years, we've established the first research program in the country dedicated to Samantha's disease at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, funded a series of other outstanding peer reviewed research projects at other leading cancer institutions around North America, and established our foundation, FightPLGA.org, as the leading resource for parents and scientists in the disease. More recently, we recently provided seed funding to jump start a groundbreaking international brain tumor tissue bank along with leading institutions in India, Egypt and China, invested in a phase 2 clinical trial for a very promising new drug, and funded a large symposium for over 500 clinicians and scientists at the International Society for Neuro-oncology meeting this past summer.
In short, we have leveraged the time, energy and money you have invested in Team Samantha to date to achieve great things, but this is important work and there is still much more to do. Put simply, we're in a race against time to fund research which can lead to new treatment alternatives for Samantha and kids like her, and we need your support now more than ever. To that end, please consider making a donation in Samantha's honor.
On behalf of Samantha and her family, we deeply appreciate your support for these efforts and hope to be able to count you as a "member" of Team Samantha this summer.
Sincerely,
Team Samantha
