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Helping Brain-Cancer Patients' Caregivers
Wall Street Journal
June 18, 2010
By: Shelly Banjo
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New York broker Eric Lichtenstein wants to make life a little easier for friends and family of people with brain cancer.
 This month, Mr. Lichtenstein, a managing director of New York's Knight Capital Group, raised $650,000 for a charity he started with his family in 2003, after his 24-year-old brother Gary died from brain cancer.
His family has donated or raised close to $3 million to date. The charity, Voices Against Brain Cancer, conducts monthly support groups for caregivers and families of brain-cancer patients, as well as people who have been diagnosed with nonmalignant brain tumors.
"Support groups for caregivers and families were nonexistent when my brother was diagnosed with brain cancer," says Mr. Lichtenstein, a Long Island native. "After his death we wanted to channel our energy to do something good and help other families affected by the disease."
The charity is now expanding its efforts and creating support groups in Michigan, Miami and Chicago.
Brain tumors are rarer than other types of cancers: In 2009 about 22,000 people were diagnosed with brain cancer in the U.S. compared with 200,000 new breast cancer cases, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. For that reason, researchers say it is harder to get funding to study brain cancer or support families dealing with the illness.
To help speed the process of finding a cure and encouraging researchers to advance the science around brain cancer, Voices Against Brain Cancer has begun giving out yearly grants of $5,000 through its young investigators program to sponsor summer internships for medical students who want to study neuro-oncology, as well as yearly grants to researchers and brain cancer centers.
"Brain cancer is very rare; however it's very challenging to treat. When a tumor is less common, it's difficult to attract significant funding for necessary research and to raise public awareness," says Susan Pannullo, director of neuro-oncology at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical College.
Ms. Pannullo received a grant from the charity to pursue research on a targeted chemotherapy process that delivers treatment directly into areas where surgery has been done, without harming surrounding brain tissue.
Click here to return to Brain Cancer in the News.
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| Voices Against Brain Cancer is a not-for-profit public charity recognized by the IRS under 501 (c) (3) |
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