Today we announced the expansion of our giving efforts, Powering the Possible, to help fight Pediatric Cancer. And I’m really proud of this new extension.
The first project we will be supporting is focused on neuroblastoma. It is the deadliest and most resistant form of childhood cancer. It strikes one in 100,000 children annually, usually before the age of 5, and despite it being so rare, it is responsible for one in seven pediatric cancer deaths. And there are few treatment options available to children with pediatric cancer because of its relatively small patient base. Most cancer treatment development has focused largely on the adult population.
Today children are often being treated with adult cancer treatments which are brutally harsh and, in many cases, more punitive than curative for children, just because something is better than nothing.
Our partners, the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), and the Neuroblastoma and Medulloblastoma Translational Research Consortium (NMTRC) launched the first FDA approved personalized medicine clinical trial investigation for pediatric cancer. The trial is developing a personalized medicine process that enables near “real time” processing of information on patient tumors and prediction of best treatments for a specific child.
Today, we are committing our resources – our people, expertise, technology and philanthropy – to help TGen and NMTRC accelerate the genetic analysis and identification of targeted treatments and to make them available to many more children than it is currently possible.
I encourage you to listen to Paul Bell, chairman of Dell’s Strategic Giving Council and President of our Public and Large Enterprise Business Unit, give an overview of the program in this video:
What we are starting today with TGen is only the beginning of what we hope will become a scalable platform and will help hundreds and ultimately thousands of children battling cancer globally.
Our Powering the Possible efforts focused on pediatric cancer will be launched soon globally: we are planning to support innovative pediatric cancer treatments in other regions around the world.
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