Foundation Gifts

Private foundations help make new drugs and therapies possible by funding research at all stages; from initial discovery through clinical trials. Seminal scientific achievements begin as pilot projects, which enjoy no guarantee of success. As research progresses, private support is crucial to expanding studies, testing hypotheses, and laying the groundwork for clinical trials. 

Foundations understand that the most significant scientific breakthroughs often arise from the riskiest hypotheses. Their funding is pivotal in allowing investigations to move through this precarious transition. Private support also leverages scientific knowledge, promoting the translation of basic investigations out of the laboratory and into the clinic.   

The following list of recent Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center breakthrough discoveries provides examples of the impact of foundation support:

• The first successful long-term remission of a patient's advanced melanoma based on the sole use of an immunology therapy;
• New therapeutic advances in the Hutchinson Center's "hibernation-on-demand" approach to slowing subjects' metabolism to improve trauma or transplant survival;
• Validation of a potential test to detect lung cancer prior to its earliest signs;
• Development of a "tumor paint" that illuminates and distinguishes cancerous cells from benign cells to guide surgeons in removing malignant brain tumors;
• Findings that obese men have more than two-and-a half times the risk of dying from prostate cancer than men considered to have a normal weight; and
• The first statistical analysis confirming human-to-human, rather than bird-to-human, transmission of avian influenza virus.
  

For more information, contact:

Elizabeth Prescott, Ph.D. Associate Director, Foundation Relations eprescot@fhcrc.org 206.667.1349

Robin Wilcox Associate Director, Foundation Relations rwilcox@fhcrc.org 206.667.5371

	Foundation Grants