Will be at the Pioneer Valley Life Sciences Institute in North End.
One of the countless banners at last year's Rays of Hope walk in Springfield that drew more than 20,000 people.Thanks to participants in the annual Rays of Hope Walk Toward the Cure of Breast Cancer, a breast cancer research center with the potential for coordinating some of the best medical investigative work being done in the Pioneer Valley is being established in Springfield’s North End to further strides toward the treatment, prevention and eventual cure of the disease that killed an estimated 40,000 women in the United States last year.
Baystate Health Foundation announced on Monday that $1.5 million in funds from the walk, which has raised $9.25 million in its 17-year history, is being donated over a five-year period to establish the Rays of Hope Center for Breast Cancer Research at the Pioneer Valley Life Sciences Institute.
The nine-year-old biomedical research institute, a collaboration between Baystate Medical Center and the University of Massachusett-Amherst, is located at 3601 Main St. in Springfield.
The new center will be co-directed by D. Joseph Jerry, science director for the institute whose research includes breast cancer, genetics and tumor suppressers, and Dr. Grace Makari-Judson, medical director of the Comprehensive Breast Center, part of the Baystate Regional Cancer Program.
One of the center’s focuses will be on the link between obesity and breast cancer.
“We are just beginning to unlock clues as to whether obesity and breast cancer may be linked, and what those links could mean for prevention, diagnosis and management of the disease,” Jerry said in a release.
D. Joseph Jerry“With this more robust support to our continuing research, we are provided significantly improved tools for answering important questions about the cellular and metabolic processes that cause lesions and tumors to develop.”
The institute, a non-profit benefit organization dedicated to biomedical research, was established in 2002 by UMass and Baystate “to provide a novel translational (seen in a lifetime) research environment for interdisciplinary teams of life scientists, physical scientists, engineers, and physicians.”
Institute board members include Dr. Richard Arenas, chief of surgical oncology at Baystate Medical and such noted researchers as Neil S. Forbes, a UMass assistant professor who is leading investigations into “developing therapeutics to treat regions of tumors that are inaccessible to standard cancer therapies’
Makari-Judson noted the strengths of the collaborations that will result with the new center in a released statement.
Dr. Grace Makari-Judson“The collaborations taking place at PVLSI already, and those that will expand with the new establishment of this newly funded center, can bring direct benefit to breast cancer patients here in western New England,” she said, adding, “It’s exciting to consider the potential of this new endeavor.”
A fund-raiser walk to raise breast cancer awareness was the vision of area breast cancer survivor Lucia “Lucy” Giuggio Carvalho back in the day when the disease was little discussed publicly.
Carvalho, who has been a walk participant every year and been involved with its evolution as one of the most successful fund-raisers in this area of the state, said she was very excited that the event “has raised so much money that we can now really make an impact in a big way.”
Lucia "Lucy" Giuggio Carvalho“Maybe this research will find something no one else has found,” said Carvalho, who voted through her involvement with the administering foundation for the fund allocation.
“Instead of putting smaller grants here and there this will be an organized effort to make an impact on how we treat breast cancer.”
She called the appointment of Jerry and Makari-Judson as co-directors of the new center as “no two better leaders.”
Carvalho, a registered nurse who had worked in Baystate’s oncology unit, was 38 when she was diagnosed with early stage breast cancer.
It was while she was recuperating that Carvalho had the idea for the walk, modeled after walks in Boston for other causes her relatives had taken part in as a way to “raise money for breast health services.”
There were no centers specifically designed to coordinate treatment of breast cancer in the area. Baystate’s center, under the direction Makari-Judson, was established in 1996.
Carvalho, now director of case management for the Longmeadow-based Jewish Geriatric Services, established a separate fund-raising account for the event that today is administered through the Baystate Health Foundation.
She named the walk Rays of Hope after a segment Kathy L. Tobin, former anchorwoman for abc40 News and FOX6, had done on breast cancer on 40.
The money provided for the institute’s new center will start this year.
Carol Baribeau, director of annual fund and events for the Baystate foundation, also called the new center’s name “another indication of the enduring legacy that Rays of Hope and all its participants have created in our community.”
“On the basis of their own experience, our Rays of Hope walkers are creating hope for future generations by supporting research that could take us much closer to a cure for the disease,’ she said.
Last week in a development indicative of research being done in the area, UMass-Amherst reported that early results from a research team there headed by environmental toxicologist Kathleen Arcaro suggest that “in the future, women and their physicians may have a new tool for evaluating breast cancer risk by examining epithelial cells naturally present in breast milk.
"The method could provide an earlier, personalized assessment of breast cancer risk than any of the currently available methods.”
Arcaro was to present the preliminary findings of her nationwide study April 4 at the American Association for Cancer Research 102nd annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.
She is associate professor of veterinary and animal sciences at UMass where Jerry, the new center’s co-director, is a professor in that department.
Last year, Rays of Hope raised close to $1 million and attracted more than 20,000 participants.
Funds are used to support programs and services for breast cancer patients and survivors, breast health education and research, various community projects and the purchase of equipment at Baystate’s Comprehensive Breast Center and at Baystate’s centers in Springfield and Greenfield and Mary Lane Hospital in Ware.
This year’s Rays of Hope Walk Toward the Cure of Breast Cancer will take place on Oct. 23 in Springfield and Greenfield, and the Run Toward the Cure 8K will also take place that day in Springfield.
Popular romance novelist and breast cancer survivor Barbara Delinsky will serve as keynote speaker at the 14th Annual Rays of Hope Breast Cancer Survivors’ Day on April 16 from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Sheraton Monarch Place Hotel at One Monarch Place in Springfield.
According to the American Cancer Society, there are more than two million breast cancer survivors in the United States, thanks to earlier detection and better treatment.
The society estimates that the chance of a woman having invasive breast cancer some time during her life is a little less 1 in 8. The chance of dying from breast cancer is about 1 in 35.
Men as well as women can get breast cancer although the incidences of the disease are much higher in women.
For more information on the institute, visit http://www.pvlsi.org/index.html
For more information on Rays of Hope, visit http://foundation.baystatehealth.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=289