Think BIG on #GivingTuesday and Support Childhood Cancer Research

#GivingTuesday is an exciting evolution in our age of consumerism. After the pandemonium of Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday, we are encouraged to think about giving on Tuesday. There are many wonderful organizations and causes you can support on #GivingTuesday - the possibilities are endless. I hope you pick at least one cause you care about, or (even better) several.

I’d invite you to think really BIG on this #GivingTuesday by supporting a cause for which I’m incredibly passionate about – childhood cancer. This disease affects more than 16,000 children a year. It could be your daughter or a grandson; your son’s best friend or a girl in your congregation. Childhood cancer is a BIG deal because it affects all of us. I care so much about this because I was one of those children.

When I was 15 years old I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma – by my own father. Can you imagine? His diagnosis was confirmed by Dr. Edwin Forman, who became a hero and mentor to me as I pursued medicine as a profession.

Inspired by the compassionate care I witnessed, I was drawn to treating childhood cancer. I ultimately became a pediatric oncologist and genetic researcher. Not only do I want to improve cancer treatments, but I want to stop kids from getting cancer altogether. Insights can come from the strangest places, and little did I know a BIG insight would come from one of the BIGGEST land mammals on the planet – the elephant.

In the summer of 2012, I was attending an evolution and medicine conference and learned that elephants rarely develop cancer and this may be because they have extra copies of the gene called TP53. I was intrigued because I care for children with Li-Fraumeni Syndrome, a rare condition where they are missing TP53 and have nearly a 100% lifetime risk of cancer. This was an “aha” moment for me because I realized we should focus more on cancer resistance instead of just cancer risk.

I immediately wanted to collaborate with the speaker at the conference, Dr. Carlo Maley. We wanted to understand how these extra copies of the TP53 gene, known as the “guardian of the genome,” could possibly prevent cancer in elephants, and maybe one day in humans, too! We started working with Utah’s Hogle Zoo to get regular elephant blood to study and do functional DNA repair experiments. We also partnered with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus to get more diverse samples and build a productive partnership with their Center for Elephant Conservation.

You might have heard the BIG news last month that made the cover of Newsweek magazine about how this research with elephants could help us in our battle to end childhood cancer. We have not found the cure to cancer, but we think we’ve discovered the mechanism for how elephants are protected from cancer. We want to work as hard – and as fast – as we can to see if we can apply this discovery to humans. One child with cancer is one child too many!

This research is expensive and requires significant philanthropic funding. That’s where your donation for #GivingTuesday can help. I hope that knowing you could make a BIG difference by supporting this research will inspire you to give. Your support can help us understand and apply how the natural resistance elephants have to cancer could lead to new treatments for kids. I’m eager to learn what 55 million years of elephant evolution can teach us about preventing and eliminating cancer in our children.

Please help me by giving BIG to this important cause on #GivingTuesday.

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