LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – September may be gone now, but it’s never too late to recognize an important reason that September is celebrated.
September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and a good time to acknowledge what Texas Tech is doing to fight cancer in children every month of the year.
Did you know that Texas Tech is the home base for a repository where cancer cell lines are received and stored and studied and returned to research centers all over the world?
In fact, in the study of neuroblastoma, one of the deadliest childhood cancers, researchers at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center have discovered a biomarker that can reveal which children with that cancer need aggressive therapy like chemo or a bone marrow transplant and which kids with the same kind of tumor would be better served with a wait and watch therapy.
Now, this plea from Dr. Pat Reynolds, a Pediatric Oncologist and Director of the Repository, “I understand that funding for childhood cancer is down by 50% right now because of the pandemic and that’s not surprising but this is really going to put a crimp on moving these new therapies forward. so it’s so important for people to help reverse this as much as they can. This is the time when we really need to pay attention to that. I know there are so many spending money on political causes but this is where you can really save some lives and these children are all races, all creeds, all ethnic groups. They need your help.”
Dr. Reynolds says the best way to give and know that your money will help cancer research here at Texas Tech is through a fundraiser called Alex’s Lemonade Stand which is funding the repository.
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