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It's our anniversary!

It has been four years to the date since we first launched the Emily Whitehead Foundation. With each anniversary, we like to reflect on the success of the past year, and thank every one of you for continuing to support us in our mission to Activate The Cure.

Giving Back

In April 2018, the Emily Whitehead Foundation presented Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP)'s Dr. Stephan A. Grupp with a $250,000 research grant. The donation has since helped to fund a new and innovative CAR-T cell therapy clinical trial and assist with some of the travel costs to bring families to Philadelphia for treatment.

Additionally, we had the honor to contribute $125,000 to a Stand Up to Cancer Phillip A. Sharp Innovation in Collaboration Award. This grant has been used to support the research collaboration of Toronto scientist Trevor Pugh, PhD, and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) pediatric oncologist David Barrett, MD, PhD, whose work includes studying the precision of pediatric cancer immunotherapy treatments. In this upcoming year, the Emily Whitehead Foundation will contribute an additional $125,000 toward a 2019 Sharp Award.

New Milestones

In May 2018, Emily celebrated six years cancer free post CAR-T cell therapy! A month prior, Emily had the special opportunity to thank Dr. Carl June of Penn Medicine, who was named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2018. As a surprise to Dr. June, Emily Whitehead was asked to write a brief tribute for the 2018 TIME 100 issue.

We also celebrated a handful of exciting new approvals for CAR-T cell therapy. In May, the U.S. FDA issued a secondary approval of Novartis CAR-T treatment Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel), for use in treating non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL). In August, the treatment was approved by the European Commission for use in treating patients in Europe. Since then, CAR-T cell therapy has also been approved in Canada and Australia!

Also this year, we had the pleasure to open our first office headquarters in our hometown of Philipsburg, PA and celebrated raising over $1,000,000 since our launch in 2015. We also had the opportunity to travel and spread awareness around the U.S. as well as Sweden and Montreal, Canada.

Fundraising Achievements

In 2018, Team EWF raised over $30,000 combined by participating both the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia marathons. In four years, Team EWF has now raised over $200,000 for pediatric cancer research!

In July, our 4th annual "Tee Off for T-Cells" golf tournament was our most successful yet and raised over $66,000. The week following, we had the honor to participate as one of eight beneficiaries of the 27th Annual Glenn O. Hawbaker Charity Golf Tournament, which raised over $26,000 for the Emily Whitehead Foundation.

Additional fundraising events included both the third annual and fourth annual Take Down Cancer high school wrestling events, the 7th Annual UMI Autocross & Cruise-In event, and the 7th Annual Blood, Sweat & Tears 5-Miler. Most recently, we traveled to Miami, Florida to host a yacht party fundraiser in collaboration with Phacilitate at the 2019 Phacilitate Leaders World and World Stem Cell Summit.

It's been a great four years! Thank you to everyone who has supported us thus far in our journey, and to all the companies and organizations that have believed in us and invited us to travel to spread awareness and share our story.

We can't wait to share with you all the exciting things to come as we enter into our fifth year!

 
Without the generosity of our many supporters, such great success in helping to fund CAR-T cell therapy research wouldn’t be possible. Please consider making a donation to EWF to help us continue the fight.