June 1, 2025

Hello friends, colleagues and family,

It's June 2025 and I am again asking for your support to help Dana Farber find a cure for cancer. You will recall my request last year when I rode on behalf of Patient X. The wonderful news is that advanced treatments at Dana Farber have put him on a path towards a cure, but he is still undergoing treatment. But even with that great news, the challenge continues. Just this year one of my best friend's brothers was diagnosed with a stage 4 cancer, my law partner and good friend is battling an aggressive form of breast cancer, and a golfing pal passed away at just 62 from cancer.

I am sure you have similar experiences. But, thankfully we all have a chance to do something about it. To raise money to find a cure, an August 2nd and 3rd, I will be riding my 16th consecutive Pan Mass Challenge, a 192 mile two day bike ride to support cancer research at Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Due to the generosity of the Warren Alpert Foundation (WAF) all of your tax deductible donations will be doubled, and all the funds you donate go 100% to the world renowned Dana Farber. Your donations are the “seed” money that allows Dana Farber to develop new and experimental drugs for life-saving advanced treatments that Dana Farber has been so instrumental in developing (nearly half of the patents for new cancer drugs come from, or involved, cancer research at DFCI).

I've made a personal commitment to raise $20,000 (before matching) in 2025, and I hope you can help me reach this important goaI. If you can give, please do so. If you cannot this year, it’s totally understood. And if you have the capacity to give a little more, your generosity will make a tremendous difference. Cuts in NIH funding have impacted DFCI significantly, and inflation has affected the cost of everything, including research at Dana Farber (a $100 donation now in 2025 is the equivalent of only $67 when I started riding in 2010!).

Donating is easy—click here http://profile.pmc.org/MB0400 (which will give you options to donate by credit card, by Venmo or through Fidelity Charitable Gift fund accounts) or you can send a check to me, payable to the Pan Mass Challenge, at 1 Old Cart Path, Acton, MA 01720.

As always, I would be honored to ride in support or memory of your loved ones who have been touched by this terrible disease. If you like, please send me their names and they will be written on my riding jersey and they will be in my thoughts every mile that I ride. Feel free to forward my email to your friends and family who might be interested in donating. And, don't forget to ask your employer about the availability of matching donations.

Thank you for your consideration and my best,

Mark

http://profile.pmc.org/Mark-Burak