money finally gets to Stanford

At long last the money we raised at the October fundraiser is in the hands of Matt van de Riji at Stanford. In the end we were able to give him and his team of researchers over $16,000! What a fantastic feeling! He was so thrilled with the gift and was blown away that we were able to raise so much in a single night. All the money is going to his research.

Matt and his colleague, Rob, gave me, Sharon and Susie Siegal (an other LMSer) a tour of the lab; we saw actual LMS (Lieomyosarcoma) tumor tissue in paraffin blocks (how it's stored when removed from the body) and we even looked at the tissue samples through microscopes. It's quite amazing how complex this kind of research is and it's all very interesting and amazing, but honestly so much of it is over my head, I am just happy that there're people who can wrap their minds around this stuff.

In layman's terms I am going to try to explain what Matt and his colleagues are up to with the research. Mind you, in a nutshell. Thanks to Sharon and others, Matt has many LMS tissues samples, 70, I think, and he was able to look at these samples and divide them into three subtypes of LMS in these three subtypes he found many targets, most notably a protein called CSF1. Targets are very important because if a cell has targets these targets can be potentially blocked with drugs. What is so exciting about Matt's research is that he not only found many target (his finding were confirmed by two other independent studies elsewhere) in these three subtypes of LMS, but he believes that there are existing drugs that will act as blockers, thus in essence starving the cancer cells from one of the foods that makes it grow.

I asked Matt what he would use our donation for and he said he wants to use it to move forward with the mouse xenograft studies, meaning he will injecting 8 mice with LMS tumor cells, 4 of them are the control group, no intervention, the other four will be treated with a drugs that he is hoping will stop the tumors. Mice studies are the precursor to human clinical trials, the whole process is slow, but Matt thinks that within two years his research could move into to a clinical trial.

I have been cursed with this horrible disease, in no way can I view myself as lucky, no one with LMS, or any cancer, can call themselves lucky, but meeting Matt and learning about the work he is doing I did feel lucky, actually it's much more than that, I have a deep gratitude ( a huge understatement) that this incredibly smart and devoted scientist is tirelessly working on the rare and obscure cancer I have. I speak for all of us living with LMS.

Be well,
Becca