[Dr. Sidney Farber] was convinced that the only thing standing between science and a cure for cancer was sustained research, sufficient funding, and the national will to bring it about. [1]
When he was a pathologist at Boston’s Children’s Hospital in the mid-1940s, nearly all children with leukemia died — often painfully and within weeks of diagnosis. In late 1947, Farber tested a drug called Aminopterin on a group of 16 children with leukemia who were very sick. Temporary remission was achieved in 10 of the 16 kids, marking the first time in medical history that a drug proved effective against a non-solid tumor cancer and earning Farber the title, the Father of Modern Chemotherapy.
TODAY, kids diagnosed with the two most common types of pediatric leukemia, ALL and AML, have about 90% and 65-70% chances of survival. [2] That’s a pretty remarkable improvement for a type of cancer that just 70 years ago, we were powerless against.
And it reaffirms how vital scientific research is to making progress against cancer and saving lives. Research is imperative to finding ways to slow the progression of cancer and further improving survival rates and quality of life for kids with cancer.
Today is World Cancer Research Day, a worldwide initiative to promote cancer research by raising awareness of the importance of cancer research.
You can support research that is doing just that — SAVING KIDS’ LIVES.
Over the next few months, we’ll be sharing stories of improvement and success in kids from Colorado and several other states that are the direct result of scientific research. We’re going to show the impact you can have by supporting kids’ cancer research.
