More than $270,000 raised for childhood cancer research

Supporters across the country reunited this year for CureSearch Walks to honor and remember those affected by childhood cancer. 

Participants went above and beyond to help organize Walks in seven cities, as well as virtually, and raised more than $270,000 to support CureSearch-funded research that will lead to the development of new, less-toxic treatments for children with cancer.  

Why do we walk? 

Since 2013, Stacey Windmiller has been involved with the CureSearch Walk, both as a participant and a volunteer, serving on the National Walk Committee. This year, Stacey and her daughter Rachel, a childhood cancer survivor, even organized their own event, the Linthicum Walk. The event raised more than $3,000 as part of the CureSearch National Walk. 

Rachel was diagnosed with neuroblastoma when she was just 14 months old. Her treatment included several rounds of chemotherapy, more than 50 blood transfusions, platelet transfusions, bone marrow aspirations and radiation. As a result of treatment, Rachel suffered through mucositis, shingles, countless fevers, infections and sleepless nights due to pain. 

“Survivorship often comes with a price in the form of long-term medical issues due to the toxicity of the drugs received during treatment,” said Stacey. “We want to help fund research that’s so desperately needed for these children. We want every child diagnosed with cancer to have safer options with fewer side effects. Every child deserves that!”  

Shana Nguyen formed Team Taylor to honor and remember her daughter, Taylor Grace, who passed away from acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in 2015 at three years old.  

Taylor was diagnosed in June of 2013 at 18 months old. For more than a year after treatment, she showed no signs of relapse. That changed in December of 2014.  

“It came back, the devil itself,” said Shana. “She was diagnosed on December 16, 2014 with an uncommon isolated central nervous system relapse in AML. After another strong and courageous fight, her cancer continued to grow. She passed away on February 11, 2015.” 

Shana has been a longtime volunteer for the Twin Cities Walk, serving on the local volunteer committee. Team Taylor has participated in the CureSearch Walk since 2016 and was one of the top fundraising teams in 2021. The team has raised more than $33,000 in the past five years.  

“We are proud to GO GOLD and raise awareness for childhood cancer,” said Shana. “Together, we are fighting for the future every child deserves.” 

Going the Extra Mile 

Walkers spend weeks, or even months leading up to Walk day fundraising and bringing awareness to the urgent, unmet need for safer childhood cancer treatments.  

Northern Virginia CureSearch Walk participants hit a significant milestone this year, helping the event surpass $1 million raised since it began in 2010.  

Janet Jumper was the top individual fundraiser for the event, raising more than $4,000. For the tenth year, Janet and her family, Team Clairebear, walked in honor of childhood cancer survivor, Claire.  

“As we continue to celebrate Claire’s success as a cancer warrior and survivor, it is very present in our minds what she had to endure to treat her neuroblastoma,” said Janet. “Like many survivors, Claire may face side effects of the chemotherapy that could impact her future health. This is why we walk every year – to make a difference so that advanced research gets funded, newer therapies are discovered and children live full, healthy, happy lives.” 

Community Support 

CureSearch Walks wouldn’t be possible without continued support from local, regional and national corporate partners. In addition to providing generous cash or in-kind sponsorships, they often also engage their employees by forming corporate walk teams to raise additional funds and awareness of how we’re working to bring children to the forefront of drug development. 

Denver CureSearch Walk presenting sponsor, Kiewit, hung a special banner from their new headquarters in Colorado to show their support of CureSearch and raise awareness during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. The Kiewit Corporate Team also raised more than $5,000 for the Denver Walk! 

Edgewater Insurance + Real Estate, along with Nebraska OLB, JoJo Domann, teamed up to support CureSearch through the Husker Heartbeat Giveback program. Each week, they donated $1,000 to 13 charities, including CureSearch, and collaborated to increase awareness and raise funds through social media and a weekly podcast, The Beat with JoJo Domann. 

LV Lumber, a National CureSearch Walk sponsor, donated 20% of all sales to CureSearch during the month of September. LV Lumber provides premier, high quality wood bats to help enhance the performance of baseball players of all ages. They strive to provide a positive impact on the lives of all players, but most importantly those battling childhood cancer. 

Thank you to this year’s presenting sponsors: Kiewit, Parexel, Merit Medical and Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital. 

From all of us at CureSearch, thank you for reuniting with us this year and raising critical funds for childhood cancer research. With your support, we’re providing hope to the 17,000 children diagnosed with cancer every year. 

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CureSearch and Love Your Melon partner to advance childhood cancer research 

At CureSearch, we’re dedicated to bringing childhood cancer patients to the forefront of drug development, but we can’t do it alone. Long-term impact will require collaboration among industry leaders and organizations also dedicated to ending childhood cancer. 

Funding partners like Love Your Melon allow us to support innovative research projects that will lead to new treatments for the 17,000 kids diagnosed with cancer every year. 

A Hat for Every Child 

Entrepreneurs Zachary Quinn and Brian Keller didn’t want to just start a business. They wanted to make a meaningful and positive social impact on the world. During an entrepreneurship class at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN, they developed the idea for an apparel company with one goal – give a hat to every child battling cancer in America.  

After surpassing their first goal of giving 45,000 hats away to children battling cancer, they set a new goal to begin funding meaningful research, therapeutic experiences and family support. Love Your Melon just celebrated its ninth birthday and to date, has given more than 232,000 beanies through giving events and hospital visits and over $8.3 million to nonprofit organizations across the United States, like CureSearch, that lead the fight against pediatric cancer for children and families battling pediatric cancer.  

A History of Support 

Love Your Melon donates 50% of net profit from all sales to nonprofit organizations around the world that lead the fight against childhood cancer, including CureSearch. In 2015, the company awarded a grant to CureSearch Young Investigator Kara Davis, DO, of Stanford University to support her work in identifying differences between healthy B-cells and those involved in the development of B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).  

Love Your Melon also supported the work of CureSearch Catapult Award recipient Ranjit Bindra, MD, PhD, of Yale University. Dr. Bindra is testing a novel treatment for pediatric glioma, an aggressive brain cancer with a five-year survival rate of less than 25%. His clinical trial is now active at seven different sites. In the next six months, Dr. Bindra’s team aims to open his trial at five additional Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Consortium (PNOC) sites.  

The Love Your Melon team has also participated in CureSearch fundraising events like the Ultimate Hike. In 2018, the team laced up for the Superior Hiking Trail Ultimate Hike and helped raise more than $110,000 for childhood cancer research.  

On the Cutting-Edge  

Recently, Love Your Melon granted $100,000 to support a CureSearch-funded immunotherapy trial for pediatric high-grade glioma. High-grade gliomas are the primary cause of death in children with brain tumors and among the most devastating pediatric cancer diagnoses with a median survival of less than two years. The current standard of care involves surgery, radiation therapy and some combination of chemotherapy. There has not been a significant improvement in survival in decades. 

Elias Sayour, MD, PhD, of the University of Florida is leading a first-in-human, phase I/II clinical trial testing an innovative personalized immunotherapy for pediatric high-grade gliomas. Like a flu vaccine, which takes pieces of the flu virus and activates the immune system against them, Dr. Sayour’s technique takes pieces of a tumor’s genetic material and activates the immune system to identify and destroy that tumor. If high-grade glioma, a hard-to-treat tumor type, is responsive to this immunotherapy, the treatment will likely translate to other pediatric and adult solid tumors as well. 

To date, Love Your Melon has donated more than $8.3 million to nonprofits around the globe to support childhood cancer research, therapeutic experiences, and family support.  

“On behalf of the families battling pediatric cancer, we enthusiastically thank Love Your Melon for their generous support of Dr. Sayour’s research to find new treatments for deadly primary high-grade gliomas,” said Kay Koehler, president and CEO of CureSearch. “Together, we’re creating a brighter future for pediatric cancer patients and their families.” 

Click here to learn more about Dr. Sayour’s project. To purchase a Love Your Melon hat or request a hat for a child you know battling cancer, visit https://loveyourmelon.com/.  

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

Media Contact: Margetta Thomas 

Communications Manager 

margetta.thomas@curesearch.org 

Global leaders in oncology, biotech join CureSearch Industry Advisory Council 

Industry leaders collaborate to accelerate the pace of pediatric drug development 

Bethesda, Md. – November 3, 2021– CureSearch for Children’s Cancer announced today the addition of five new members to its Industry Advisory Council (IAC), as well as the appointment of Jeffrey Skolnik, MD, as the new Council Chair. The IAC includes leaders from global pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and clinical research organizations who champion CureSearch and pediatric cancer programs within the drug development industry. 

“With the leadership of Dr. Jeffrey Skolnik, a proven champion of drug development for children with cancer, and the addition of five strong, globally-recognized leaders in pediatric oncology, CureSearch is proud to continue its mission of facilitating the advancement of drug development for children,” said Chris Riley, national director of corporate healthcare partnerships at CureSearch.  

“It is an incredible honor to Chair the CureSearch IAC. CureSearch is in a unique position to bring together leaders of pediatric oncology drug development, across all functions, in order to accomplish its goals of delivering innovative medicines to children with cancer. I look forward to leading this remarkable team, and working together with the outstanding leadership at CureSearch.” said Dr. Skolnik. 

IAC members are on the council for two years and are allowed to serve a maximum of three terms. New Council members who will begin their term this November are:  

• Debbie Chirnomas, MD, Arvinas 
• Ruchi Gupta, Genentech 
• Geoffrey Kannan, PhD, MD, Labcorp Drug Development 
• Katherine Minson, MD, Parexel  
• Justin Wahlstrom, MD, AbbVie 

Dr. Skolnik, who has served as a member of the IAC for five years, is senior vice president of clinical development for Inovio Pharmaceuticals. He is a practicing pediatric hematologist-oncologist with experience in large pharmaceutical and small biotechnology companies. Dr. Skolnik also has experience in early and late-stage clinical development, and in developing oncology drug programs for children. 

Dr. Chirnomas is a pediatric hematologist/oncologist, with a specialty in stem cell transplant, and VP of oncology clinical research at Arvinas. She was previously VP of clinical development and medical affairs at Gamida Cell. Prior to joining Gamida Cell, Dr. Chirnomas worked at Pfizer and was part of the team that brought Mylotarg (gemtuzumab ozogamicin) through a successful ODAC to approval in the US and EU. 

Dr. Gupta has more than 11 years of regulatory experience within the pharmaceutical industry. She is currently the regulatory program director for Genentech and leads teams in developing, implementing and delivering cross-functional regulatory strategy for projects – adult and pediatric drug development – and filing licensure applications with label updates.  

Dr. Kannan, a pediatric neuro-oncologist, is the senior medical director and oncology team lead for the Americas at Labcorp Drug Development. He also serves as a medical monitor in a wide variety of industry sponsored trials, and is also responsible for the training and professional development of other oncology physicians at Labcorp.  

Dr. Minson is a board-certified pediatric hematologist-oncologist and medical director at Parexel, with experience in academic clinical research and preclinical drug development. She is a member of the phase I/rare tumor and hematology therapeutic area sections within the overall Hematology/Oncology franchise, and is actively involved in the Pediatric and Cell and Gene Therapy working groups.  

Dr. Wahlstrom, pediatric development lead for AbbVie oncology, is a physician trained in pediatric hematology/oncology and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, and has led clinical development efforts in pediatric oncology across multiple assets since 2017. Prior to joining AbbVie in 2017, Dr. Wahlstrom was an assistant professor in the pediatric bone marrow transplant division at the University of California and led clinical trials in pediatric stem cell transplantation. 

“We’re honored to have such a variety of industry leaders join the CureSearch team, and look forward to collaborating and advancing pediatric drug development,” said Jared Brancazio, chair of the CureSearch Board of Directors and vice president of investments at Brancazio Wealth Management of Raymond James. 

CureSearch is a national nonprofit that works to accelerate the development of less-toxic, more effective pediatric cancer treatments by investing in large-scale grants that address areas of critical unmet need. IAC members review potential research projects, offering unique insight and guidance around the needs and potential pitfalls emerging treatments might face in the drug development process. 

To learn more about the IAC, visit https://curesearch.org/advisory-councils.  

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About CureSearch for Children’s Cancer 
CureSearch for Children’s Cancer, a national nonprofit organization based in Bethesda, Md., works to end childhood cancer by driving targeted and innovative research with measurable results in an accelerated time frame. CureSearch focuses on advancing the strongest research out of the laboratory and into clinical trials and development, where better, less-toxic treatments can quickly help children. To learn more visit curesearch.org. 

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