History

Hope Funds for Cancer Research was conceived with the observation that the scientific and medical communities have made great strides in treating high-prevalence cancers and very little progress in the harder-to-treat lower-prevalence cancers. For instance, as a result of the introduction rituximab in the mid to late 1990s, progression-free survival for non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma patients has increased to 50 months from the expected 12 months prior to the drug’s introduction. We have also observed this phenomenon in certain leukemias, breast cancer, colon cancer and recently, in lung cancer. The hypothesis was that funding played a role. Not surprisingly, patients with the cancers listed here account for the largest addressable patient populations within cancer.

Research concluded that the types of cancers where the least treatment progress has been made are also generally the lowest in prevalence, but in some cases in the mid- to high-range for incidence. Often, these patients live for a short time, so the pool of patients remains small. The result is that there are fewer patients to advocate for better therapies and the addressable market is less exciting for drug developers. These cancers include: gastric, esophageal, liver, pancreatic, lung, ovarian, sarcoma and brain cancer.

Armed with this information, the Hope Funds for Cancer Research was formed by concerned people who have experience in oncology, intellectual property law, investment banking, philanthropy, sociology and the arts to establish a funding vehicle that would take a rational scientific, medical and investment approach to granting money to the most interesting and promising research efforts to address these cancers.

Hope Funds plans to honor, with an annual medal, five individuals or organizations that have made a significant impact to patient care. The Hope Funds is currently considering research scientists, drug-sponsors, key opinion-leader physicians, philanthrophers, survivors and advocates. In addition, the organization plans to award research grants to young researchers who have the highest probability of making an impact in these hardest-to-treat cancers. The organization hopes to involve as many people as possible who have been part of the process of turning death sentence cancers into chronic disease.