Next Monday, May 8th is World Ovarian Cancer Day and I am helping to raise money for the Ovarian Cancer Institute. My personal connection to this is pretty obvious, but my choice of organizations might not be. Let me tell you more about that. I joined the board for the Ovarian Cancer Institute not long after I was diagnosed. I wanted to find some way to get involved so I did some research and ultimately decided this was the organization I wanted to support with my time and my money. There are quite a few organizations that are focused on ovarian cancer – OCRFA (nationally based – research, advocacy and outreach), NOCC (nationally based with local chapters – advocacy and outreach), and GOCA (local – advocacy and outreach – big projects are the Teal Trot and the patient care packages) are probably the best known. While I fully support the other groups, and participate in some of those events, I chose to serve with OCI because they are local, and because of the primary focus on research, specifically in these 2 areas:
- Early diagnosis – The lab (at Georgia Tech) funded by OCI has developed an early detection test that is 100% effective. They are now in the process of collecting enough samples of early stage ovarian cancer tissue to complete the FDA approval process. Clearly those samples are hard to find but they are close!
- Better and more targeted treatments (very sciencey topics like genome based personalized medicine and targeted RNA-Based Therapeutics) – Optimal drug predictive algorithms and direct tumor treatment projects have had very positive results. The research team was recently published in the prestigious Nature Scientific Reports for the success of eradicating tumors in models through unique nanotechnology that can only be created at Georgia Tech.
If you would like more information about the institute or the current research studies, please visit our website: Ovarian Cancer Institute
So this is my once-per-year plea for money. This work will save lives. I can’t think of a better cause. Thank you for considering it and thank you, as always, for your support!
Kickin' Cancer's Ass 