Thank you for supporting this remarkable organization and critically important cause.

The Pan-Mass Challenge is a vital source of research funding, that has supported the pursuit of high-risk, high-reward ideas through to clinical investigation and now a new paradigm of treatment for some cancers. The PMC is the life blood of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, affiliated with Harvard Medical School, one of the most productive and important research institutions in the world. For so many like myself, the PMC is an annual reminder of how only together we will defeat cancer, each doing our part in the lab, at the bedside, or through the PMC - on the bike.

For sure, I am not a cyclist. But I ride to honor the patients we have lost and with the memories of my father, James H. Bradner, Jr., whom we lost after too short a battle with pancreatic cancer. I ride also for so many who fight this disease quietly and bravely, in relative anonymity. Like so many who participate in the PMC, I find this weekend a powerful and emotional experience. Having been a clinician at the Farber, I can say with authority that all funds raised will support bleeding edge, important research. 

Curing cancer is the ultimate team sport, and we are privileged at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research to work so closely with Dana-Farber physicians and scientists. Together, we are dissecting cancer biology for new insights that might lead to therapeutics, reimagining the treatment of blood cancers with CAR-T therapy, developing new chemical strategies in protein degradation for challenging protein targets, and most importantly bringing dozens of new targeted medicines to patients in early phase clinical trials.

Thank you sincerely for your support, which again is absolutely the life blood of scientific research. One by one, we will find a cure for this dreadful disease.

Background

I am a cancer doctor, trained in hematologic malignancies (blood cancers) and stem cell transplantation. Through this work, I have had the privilege to know individuals and their families at the most uncertain and impossible times in their lives.

I am also a scientist, focused on inventing and delivering definitive medicines for life-threatening diseases, notably cancer. Through this work, I have had the opportunity to work alongside passionate, brilliant scientists around one of the most challenging obstacles facing cancer research today: the discovery of targeted, tolerated, effective therapies.

Previously on the faculty of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, now leading the nearby Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR), I am humbled by the challenge we face to understand cancer and to create curative medicines. Only through committed and creative research, powered by new and disruptive therapeutic technologies, will we deliver the medicines patients rightly expect from science today.

Fun fact: in celebration of my 50th birthday this year, Jennifer and I invited 50 friends and spouses to ride the 50 mile Wellesley loop.  Please keep an eye out for a pack of nerds on wheels. #50for50