This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Tonight: Stand Up to Cancer

Tonight, September 7, 2012 at 8 p.m., you can stand up to cancer by tuning in to the Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) telecast.

Scientists have made remarkable progress in the war on cancer over the past four decades—but we haven’t won yet. One in two men and one in three women are still expected to get cancer at some point in their lifetimes.

Tonight, you can help stand up to cancer.

Find out what's happening in La Jollawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

How: Tune in to the Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) telecast, which will feature SU2C’s scientific Dream Teams—top scientists working together to combat a particular cancer—as well as entertainers such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Julia Roberts, Samuel L. Jackson, Matt Damon, Michael Douglas, Taylor Swift, Coldplay, Alicia Keys, Tim McGraw, and many more.

When: September 7, 2012 at 8 p.m.

Find out what's happening in La Jollawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Where: All major television networks, including ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, HBO, and VH1.

Why: Support scientists, patients, and survivors standing up to cancer, including Dr. Kristiina Vuori, president and Cancer Center director at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute and one of San Diego’s own SU2C Dream Team members.

SU2C is a program of the Entertainment Industry Foundation, a charitable organization that has raised more than $100 million for cancer research in the past two years, much of it in connection with nationally televised fundraising specials. SU2C’s scientific partner is the American Association for Cancer Research.

In 2011, Dr. Vuori and her collaborators on SU2C’s Melanoma Dream Team received a three-year grant of $6 million to explore a personalized medicine approach to treating metastatic melanoma. The information generated by the team’s research, including data from Dr. Vuori’s drug discovery work, will inform clinical trials that will determine whether this personalized approach significantly improves clinical outcomes for patients with melanoma. The project may also lay the groundwork for fighting many other tumor and disease types.

“This is a test case to determine whether personalized medicine can become a reality. It’s our hope to be able to treat a patient with melanoma that has metastasized based on the molecular profile of that patient’s tumor—an approach that’s likely to be more effective and have fewer side effects than current treatments,” said Dr. Vuori. “Most importantly, our approach may represent improved survival for this patient group that currently has limited treatment options.”

According to the National Cancer Institute, one out of 51 people will be diagnosed with melanoma of the skin during their lifetime. One person dies from melanoma every hour in the United States.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?