PHILADELPHIA/ SEPTEMBER 30, 2018/ Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF), a leading national childhood cancer charity, is declaring war on childhood cancer to ensure an end to the disease once and for all. As Childhood Cancer Awareness Month comes to a close, the fact remains that in the United States, every day of every month of every year, the equivalent of a classroom of children are diagnosed with cancer; 36 families face the fight of their life. ALSF will use the following weapons so these kids can have the childhood they deserve.
ALSF has a legacy of filling critical research and family services gaps in the childhood cancer community. The Foundation has consistently been at the forefront of funding innovative and breakthrough research to find cures.
ALSF continues to encourage innovative collaboration. In September 2018, the Foundation brought together over 100 leaders in the childhood cancer community from across the globe to develop roadmaps to decipher, understand and solve the most pressing childhood cancer problems. Known as the Crazy 8 Initiative, ALSF is having the brightest minds and thought leaders of childhood cancer come together to develop roadmaps for curing six difficult childhood cancers along with big data and catalyzing clinical trials.
Continuing to fill gaps, ALSF has invested in technology through the first-of-its-kind Childhood Cancer Data Lab (CCDL). Data scientists, researchers and computer engineers are working together to harness the power of big data and computers to find solutions to childhood cancer. There is enough publicly available disease data at the National Institutes of Health to fill up several hundred Libraries of Congress. The CCDL has created a tool, called Refine.Bio, to organize the data into one format. Researchers across the globe will be able to efficiently access and analyze this data to identify common patterns. In turn, they hope this collaborative dataset will accelerate the development of new therapies to cure childhood cancers.
Lastly, ALSF continues to accelerate breakthrough research and provide immediate impact for the families facing this disease by funding clinical trials. ALSF will ensure that cutting edge treatments are available for kids with cancer. When that treatment is not available nearby the patient’s hometown, the Foundation will make sure the family can travel to get there.
ALSF looks forward to the day when the Foundation can close because cures are safer and readily available and lemonade stands can go back to being a fun, summer past time and not a life-saving refreshment. For more information about how you can join Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation on the frontlines of this fight, visit AlexsLemonade.org.