Engaging the Public’s Concerns About Cancer to Create New Models of Translational Research: Stand Up To Cancer Founders Look Back at its Tenth Anniversary
Founded in 2009 by women leaders in the entertainment and media industries, Stand Up To Cancer is a groundbreaking movement that accelerates innovative cancer research and gets new therapies to patients quickly to save lives now. SU2C has generated pledges totaling $746 million, facilitating 120 collaborations among top researchers. Among its accomplishments, SU2C projects have contributed to FDA approval of nine new cancer therapies.
Accelerating Clinical Uses of Immunotherapies & More
SU2C has also helped accelerate clinical uses of immunotherapies against cancer, including sponsoring the first combination immunotherapy trials. In addition, technologies using blood tests to identify cancers early, imaging cancers to understand tumor progression, and targeting drug discovery and precision medicine via new laboratory tools have been advanced.
These innovations have been powered by a new model of public support for cancer research: harnessing support for cancer research into large projects that can quickly develop and test new therapies. In their work, SU2C’s founders fostered a new model to bring the public deeply into cancer research.
Central Insight: Translational Research Projects Needs Significant Funding
A central insight of SU2C’s founders was that for over a century individual giving and philanthropy had been a mainstay of funding scientific research centers at academic medical centers or investigations based on single cancers, but these models were not producing significant advances in cancer treatments. To focus on translational research – an exciting prospect as molecular and genetic knowledge was being rapidly generated in laboratories across the world—significant funding had to be marshalled and offered to large, diverse teams of scientists focused specifically on emerging areas of cancer research and focusing directly on patient benefits.
In 2009, by mobilizing the entertainment and media industries in unprecedented ways, SU2C started raising funds to accelerate the pace of cancer research. And with the support of media and entertainment leaders, it found new ways to engage the public to increase awareness about cancer prevention and to highlight progress being made in the fight against the disease.
At Stand Up To Cancer’s tenth anniversary, the founders of SU2C came together to reflect on the organization that they had created and the prospects for bringing more attention to cancer research and more dollars to significant cancer research projects. Read the details at The Hollywood Reporter.
