by Mary Miller

Fight Colorectal Cancer is thrilled to announce during this holiday season that thanks to the generous donations made to the Lisa Fund, it will be awarding its first-ever two-year $100,000 grant to a scientist whose work fights advanced stage colorectal cancer.

Andrea Bertotti, MD, PhD, of the Institute for Cancer Research and Treatment (IRCC) in Candiolo, Italy, has learned that his lab will receive this major grant. “His work will be ground-breaking and exactly in line with the reason Lisa Dubow created this fund—to support a promising researcher working to advance the treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer,” said Carlea Bauman, president of Fight Colorectal Cancer. Fully 100 percent of donations go directly to support young scientists. Each year’s winner is selected by an expert panel of researchers, through a review process administered by the American Association for Cancer Research. Read the rest of this entry »

During the coming weeks Fight Colorectal Cancer is sponsoring two very unique small group discussions that will include colorectal cancer survivors. The intent is to bring together survivors for an in-depth discussion to find out your opinions and to learn from your experinces from diagnosis to the present.

• Colorectal Cancer Survivor Discussion- Charleston, SC Saturday, December 8, 2012 from 11:00 AM to 2:30 PM (EST)
• Colorectal Cancer Survivor Discussion- Alexandria, VA Thursday, November 29, 2012 from 5:30 PM to 9:00 PM (EST)

These are informal and confidential discussions to help us learn how we can improve our educational programs for patients, caregivers and families. We would like the opportunity to ask you your opinions about what you think is needed for patients, after being diagnosed, while in treatment, and after treatment is over. Every participant is unique and helpful to us as we explore new ways to support and provide education to patients and their families.

We will be following up with notes, feedback and sound bytes of the two events after the first of the year. The end result will help us better plan and adapt our upcoming programs. If you are interested in particpating please check out the EVENT and REGISTRATION details for the Alexandria, VA and Charleston, SC sessions.

If you have comments you would like to share, please feel free to contribute and include as part of this post. We are most definitely listening.

Pausing today to give thanks for this amazing Fight Colorectal Cancer community, we’d like to especially salute the doctors, nurses, family and friends who work every single day to support people living with colorectal cancer, and to the researchers who devote endless days and nights fighting this disease.

Just before the holiday, we got a final progress report from Dr. Jon Chung, who received the 2011 Lisa Fund grant.  Every single dollar that supported his work came from this community of people who donated to the Lisa Fund, so you should know what your generous donations brought:

“I am extremely grateful for the award of this grant. It has been hugely beneficial in my career. Since the end of the grant funding period, I have been promoted to faculty at Johns Hopkins…As a result of this grant, the laboratory has developed a firm interest in developing [new] inhibitors for Hedgehog signaling…in colorectal cancer—an area of research that had not been previously a focus of the laboratory. I believe that the focus cancer signaling pathways will be a feature of my current and future career as a cancer researcher.”    

Dr. Chung is researching one of the signaling ‘pathways’ that cause colorectal cancer to change from localized to metastatic disease. During his Lisa-funded year, he and his coworkers identified a new gene involved with activating Hedgehog, which eventually could lead to a new biomarker test.

So thank you: Not only did your contributions build a concrete step forward in the fight against metastatic cancer, but you made a life-changing impact on a promising young scientist—and a whole laboratory.

At our Thanksgiving tables today, there are a few beloved faces missing—I think of Lisa Dubow, who started the Lisa Fund as thanks for researchers who gave her an extra 9 years of life. And I think of Kate Murphy, who started this blog to bring Research news to you, and who also used her years living with cancer to make a huge impact on countless lives.

In the great circle of life, their legacy lives into the future, thanks to people like Dr. Chung and you in this community.

 Read more: about Dr. Chung’s work,  and Lisa Dubow.

Fight Colorectal Cancer is pleased to announce that we will be providing scholarships for advocates to attend Call-on Congress 2013!

Scholarship applicants must be:

• A voting resident in Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio, or Wisconsin
• A colorectal cancer survivor or patient currently in treatment
• A first time Call-on Congress attendee
• “Like us” on Facebook

One person from each of the target states listed above will be selected to receive a scholarship to attend Call-on Congress. The scholarships are made possible through a private donation in memory of advocate and friend Joyce Anne Ware Longfellow, who passed away earlier this year. The aim is to help survivors come to Washington, DC and make their voices heard for the first time at Call-on Congress.

The deadline to apply is December 1st.

Get more information and apply today!

An international study described in the Oct. 17 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that universal tumor testing in all newly diagnosed colorectal patients produced a “modest increase” in finding people with Lynch syndrome.

One in every 35 people with colorectal cancer has Lynch syndrome – an inherited genetic mutation which greatly increases the person’s chance of developing colorectal cancer more than once, plus other cancers (stomach, pancreas, urinary system, brain or skin cancers). Women with Lynch syndrome also face a 40-60 percent chance of developing endometrial (uterine) cancer in their lifetime and an increased risk for ovarian cancer.

Until genetic tests of tumors became available in recent years, Lynch syndrome could only be  diagnosed based on a family history of cancers. But even with genetic testing, Lynch syndrome is still significantly under-diagnosed.

Read the rest of this entry »