The Whit Whit Fund
The “Whit Whit Fund” began very organically. The Posillico men shaved their heads every year for St. Baldrick’s to raise money for Pediatric Cancer. When Whitney was diagnosed, her cousin decided to start “Team Whitney” to raise money in her honor.
In ten days, we raised over $173,000! We then started the “Whit Whit Fund” at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The “Whit Whit Fund” raises money to research pediatric tumor cancers. To date we have raised over $1,400,000 for a total of over $1,600,000 for Pediatric Cancer research!
Make a donation by clicking above or if you prefer to write a check:
Checks should be made payable to: MSKCC. Write memo as: “Whit Whit Fund”.
Mail to:
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Attn: Colleen Hanley
PO Box 27106
New York, NY 10087
Tax ID is 13-1924236.
Research
Thanks to the continued dedication of the Whit’s Way community, The Whit Whit Fund is sustaining some of MSKCC’s most innovative research on pediatric solid tumors.
In 2015, Dr. Shukla and Dr. Ladanyi started a large-scale compound screening effort to discover new drugs against Malignant Rhabdoid Tumors (MRT).
They have now identified a unique protein as a potential drug target in MRT. They are currently performing detailed studies on laboratory models to confirm this protein is a vulnerable target.
Once these studies are completed, they plan to focus on the development of drugs against this protein which can be moved into clinical trials.
They are also studying the ability to perform “liquid biopsies” for several high-risk solid tumor types. Liquid biopsies allow physicians to gain important genetic information about a patient’s tumor through simple blood tests, rather than having to perform invasive tumor biopsies.
Drs. Shukla and Ladanyi have demonstrated that through liquid biopsies, they can identify tumor-specific DNA in the blood of patients with sarcomas.
This is a powerful observation which can improve the way we diagnose and monitor patients. They are currently collecting and analyzing blood samples from a very large group of patients for over two years per patient.
The goal is to help reduce the number of invasive procedures such as biopsies and scans we perform on children by replacing them with blood tests.
As you can see, you are making a difference! Thank you!
