Thanks to an outpouring of support from philanthropists, people from all walks of life, corporations and public-spirited organizations across the country, we have a chance to strike a real blow against cancer, which still claims more than half a million American lives each year. For me, as for so many, the fight is personal.
Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C), the charitable initiative launched in May 2008, announced the first round of three-year grants this week, totaling $73.6 million. The money is going to SU2C "Dream Teams" of top scientists at different institutions to help them get promising new treatments to cancer patients -- and do it fast.
Cancer took both of my parents -- my father died of lung cancer in 2005 and my mother of ovarian cancer just two years later. I have many friends who are contending with the disease, and we will all somehow be touched by cancer some day.
I am privileged to run the Entertainment Industry Foundation, the collective philanthropy for the television and film businesses. We've been part of an extraordinary coalescing of people within the entertainment community around two ambitious goals this past year: convey to the American people that we are on the cusp of great advances in cancer research, if only we can all come together to support this research; and facilitate new and better ways for scientists doing the research to work together. From the person who can contribute $1 to the corporations and philanthropists who can make a multi-million dollar gift, each and every one of us can make a difference.
ABC, CBS and NBC led the way by donating the air time for a simultaneously broadcast fundraising special last September, and over 100 people from the film, TV and music worlds volunteered their time to participate. Sheryl Crow, Christina Applegate and Melissa Etheridge, wearing shirts with the simple word "survivor," sang, standing side by side. Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson and Brian Williams reported on promising cancer research. Patrick Swayze, Meryl Streep, Beyoncé, James Taylor, Robin Roberts, Salma Hayek, Jimmy Fallon, Dana Delany, Forest Whitaker and many, many others took part.
Donors at all levels responded enthusiastically, and after the broadcast, $100 million had been raised for cancer research programs.
Raising the money was one challenge; devising a model for investing the funds in projects with the greatest potential to bear fruit in a compressed time-frame is quite another. Our scientific partner, the prestigious American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), and a core group of scientists developed a roadmap centered on getting new therapies to patients quickly. The clear starting point was that Stand Up To Cancer will fund only "translational" research, which is all about moving science out of the lab and into real-world treatments in the clinic, where they can save cancer patients' lives.
The plan was designed to hit impediments to progress head on, such as the natural boundaries and competitiveness that can exist between research centers. Requiring the "best and the brightest," both from different institutions and disciplines, to collaborate is at the heart of SU2C's Dream Team approach.
When Nobel Laureate Phillip A. Sharp of MIT signed on to chair the committee that would recommend which teams be funded, other august scientists quickly followed. Painstakingly narrowing the initial 237 team ideas to five team grant recipients was a complicated, time-consuming and -- particularly for the finalists -- uniquely interactive process.
The five teams chosen include more than 200 researchers, with representatives from cancer advocacy groups participating to ensure that the patient's point of view is always taken into account. The projects touch on many of the most innovative areas in cancer research, which increasingly focus on deciphering genetic and cellular events that cause cancers to occur and allow them to spread, and on developing interventions that will prevent or reverse these events.
Sherry Lansing, Katie Couric, Laura Ziskin, Noreen Fraser, Rusty Robertson, Sue Schwartz, Ellen Ziffren and Kathleen Lobb are the core group, as well as myself, from the entertainment and media businesses who worked to develop SU2C. For Laura and Noreen, this is intensely personal as they are cancer survivors. As a tribute to my parents and on behalf of my colleagues, as well as everyone else in our industry and all the scientists involved, I can tell you we are in it for the long haul. And we hope the American people will be, too. The breadth and number of proposals that were received points to how many promising projects are out there going unfunded. Donating to support cancer research, especially in today's economy, is challenging, but working together, we can all stand up to cancer, ending it once and for all.
Please visit www.standup2cancer.org.