Pedal the Cause 2018 on September 29 & 30 is on track to be our biggest and best event yet! Registration opens in just onemonth. Mark your calendar and check your inbox for upcoming details.
On Wednesday, January 31st we celebrated our top fundraisers – the Podiums – at an exclusive dinner at Kaldi’s Citygarden. Our six Podium fundraisers of 2017 (Dan Timm, Teri Griege, Nicole Stubblefield, Bill Koman, Mark Hyman and Dave Hopper) all raised over $25,000 for cancer research. They were joined by Siteman Cancer Center and St. Louis Children’s Hospital leadership, along with other top Pedal supporters. Congratulations to our Podiums!
A project funded by Pedal the Cause in 2016 has found a previously unknown way that cells sense a kind of damage induced by certain chemotherapy drugs. “That could be an opening for a chemotherapy drug,” Principal Investigator Nima Mosammaparast, MD, PhD said. “We may be able to design a drug that is toxic to tumors but not to normal cells by targeting this alkylation repair pathway.”
Funded in 2017 Principal Investigator:Gavin Dunn, MD, PhD Goal: To develop a better understanding of how the immune system recognizes brain tumors and to find a way to study immune response to recurrent tumors. Although successful in other cancers, treatments that harness the immune system to fight tumors, or immunotherapies, are not yet as effective in glioblastoma. This work will help shape how we can enhance immunotherapies for glioblastoma patients.
DiPersio named President of Transplantation Society
John DiPersio, MD, PhD, Pedal the Cause funded researcher and director of the Division of Oncology and deputy director of Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has been elected to the top leadership post in the American Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (ASBMT). He will take over the role during the society’s meetings in Salt Lake City in February.
Mark was six-time rider on team CIBC in 2017, and a first-time Yellow Jersey! Mark rides in honor of his friend Johanna, so that one day. As Mark says “I’ll sweat and labor and at some point, my mind will falter and say ‘geez, this is tough’. And then I’ll remember the fighting spirit of my friend Johanna Mayes and I’ll say out loud, ‘this is easy’, and I’ll keep pedaling.”
Express Scripts is co-sponsor of our 2017 Yellow Jersey Celebration and has been a proud Pedal the Cause sponsor for five years. Their support of Pedal the Cause allows for 100% of rider-raised donations to fund the best and brightest ideas in cancer research. Thanks to their support, and to their team Express Scripts, we are closer to creating a world without cancer.
