#495 Give Us More Than a Dime for Much More Time

My heroes: Dr. Bonnie King, PhD and Dr. Christopher Contag, PhD

These are my heroes.  No red flowing capes or pointy things on their ears with a mask covering their grins; simply super heroes disguised as "Champions for the Metastatic Community".  They are researchers who are using their brilliant minds to find a cure and are the well deserved recipients of one of the METAvivor research grants for metastatic breast cancer.  Hallelujah!  They understand we need answers NOW and are doing something about it.  Thanks to METAvivor for recognizing and rewarding their talents.

Now you may ask, "But what can I do?".  You can make a difference.  Your donation today will help us achieve our goal of $20,000 by the end of the year and get us one step closer to giving us more time. Remember, it is all Heather and Maggie wanted and what we wanted for them--TIME.  It didn't happen, however, there are thousands of Heathers and Maggies clinging to the hope that these researchers and other like-minded pioneers in the field will find a magic combination of drugs to give us that precious commodity.

Here's a brief synopsis of what this grant will do.

Christopher H. Contag, PhD

Professor, Departments of Pediatrics, Microbiology & Immunology, and Radiology 

Bonnie L. King, PhD

Instructor, Department of Pediatrics

Stanford University

Modeling Therapeutic Strategies for Breast Cancer Metastasis to Bone 

In this grant application we propose to study the “vicious cycle of bone metastasis’ in our human bone culture model. We will: 1) Develop methods to measure how much bone is being broken down, 2) Demonstrate that we can reverse bone destruction in our model with bone targeting drugs currently used to treat bone loss in osteoporosis and metastatic cancer, and 3) Measure the effects of these drugs on breast cancer cells growing in human bone tissues. These experiments will show that we can measure the cell and tissue responses that occur during late stage bone metastasis, and modify them with current drugs. This will prove that our model can be used to test new, more effective approaches to prevent and treat breast cancer metastasis to bone.

Discovering the illusive jackpot of a cure is not a simple task to undertake but if Dr. King and Dr. Contag are game so are we to support their research.  To make sure they can continue their critical work go to www.onewomanmanylakes.org and donate.   All of us with the disease, along with our children and spouses and grandchildren and friends, will be forever grateful for our precious extra  TIME.

Thanks for reading #495 of 7777.