JOSH'S TEAM-VAL STEVENSON

Hi Friends,

We are seeking your help to raise funds to support the fight against Desmoplastic Small Round Cell Tumor (DSRCT) a rare and very aggressive sarcoma. Josh has been courageously fighting this disease for over a year, undergoing multiple rounds of chemo to shrink his tumours. Josh has had a tough year fighting this disease and has done so with grace and grit.

One of the key things I've learned is how impactful your donation is...

In cancer research, there are three main sources of funding: government, industry, and private donations. Government and industry funding can be generous but are often unpredictable and unreliable. Private donations, however, are the most impactful because they go to work immediately.

Furthermore, for rare cancers like the one Josh is fighting, government and industry funding are scarce, as the majority goes to more common cancers. Private donations are the only way to make significant progress in combating rarer forms of cancer. Sarcomas, like Josh's, disproportionately affect young people, making this battle even more challenging, both emotionally and financially.

Through your generous donations, Dr Torsten Nielsen's lab at the Jack Bell Research Centre is researching treatments for Josh's type of cancer. I feel grateful and encouraged at the excitement Dr. Neilsen and his team have for creating new therapies to help fight this sarcoma. Dr. Nielsen collaborates with many other scientists on a variety of critical projects. I was honored to tour the research facility and meet the impressive individuals working tirelessly to make breakthroughs. As I mentioned to his colleagues, The sports figures, movie stars, and musicians may get the accolades, recognition, and money, but our scientists deserve to be celebrated just as much!

Josh's goal is to be a statistical outlier in this fight against his disease, and your support is helping him inch closer to that goal. They say it takes a village, and you are that village. Please know that all your donations go directly to support Dr. Nielsen's lab at the Jack Bell Research Centre.

This year is different as the tour de cure bike ride has been replaced with a "Workout to Conquer Cancer" encompassing 31 days of activity through May. There will be a combination of group and personal activities and I will be updating you on this page.

Did you donate last year?

Here is an update from Dr. Nielsen himself:

"The Nielsen lab is investigating the involvement of gamma-delta T-cells in DSRCT and related sarcomas. This is part of a larger project assessing therapeutic biomarker expression in DSRCT, for which we have recently secured ethical approval to gather all the available samples in BC (including now also from BC Childrens). We are concurrently optimizing tests to detect targets for three newly developed antibody-drug conjugate therapies. In parallel we have struck up a new collaboration with investigators at the worlds leading centre for DSRCT research (Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York) who are helping us design a much-needed genetically-engineered mouse model for this cancer that could be used for experimental therapeutics. To accelerate all this work, we have identified a bright, hardworking and motivated young researcher to join our team as our new technologist dedicated to the DSRCT project. Finally, with Josh, Sophie & Val's personal help as part of our newly formed Patient and Family Advisory Council, we are working to secure funding from the Terry Fox Research Institute that will include DSRCT in a program to investigate Childhood, Adolescent & Young Adult Sarcomas. If successful this Program Project would bring in an additional team of 11 colleagues to work on DSRCT and related cancers of the young, including internationally prominent cancer researchers like Sam Aparicio and David Huntsman who have not focussed on sarcomas before."

Your support means the world to me and I am ever grateful for any contribution you can make. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Val xo