Safeway, philanthropic arm launch annual breast cancer-fundraising initiative
PLEASANTON, Calif. Safeway and The Safeway Foundation on Thursday launched their annual chain-wide October Breast Cancer Awareness fundraising initiative. Funds used from past campaigns helped to create two new research projects.
Safeway and its Safeway Foundation philanthropic arm partnered with cancer scientists from government, the pharmaceutical industry, patient advocacy groups and cancer centers to address major stumbling blocks that medical professionals say hinder the development of new breast cancer treatments: faster, more efficient clinical trials and medicines that are designed to work better in individual patients.
“It is gratifying to see our fundraising dollars bear fruit,” stated Larree Renda, Safeway EVP, chief strategist and administrative officer and chair of the Safeway Foundation. “We have teamed up with some of North America’s premier cancer centers and we are beginning to see some encouraging results.”
The first project, the I-SPYTRIAL (Investigation of Serial Studies to Predict Your Therapeutic Response with Imaging And moLecular Analysis) is managed by the Biomarkers Consortium in conjunction with the National Cancer Institute. The Consortium is a public-private partnership led by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health that includes the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and a large number of partners from major pharmaceutical companies, leading academic medical centers, nonprofit and patient advocacy groups. Scientists from NCI, FDA and major cancer research centers helped develop and will participate in the conduct of the trial. In the course of the trial, women with locally advanced breast cancer will be given drugs in development that are individually targeted to the biology of each woman’s tumor. Researchers will use data from one set of patients’ treatment to treat other patients, and thus more quickly eliminate ineffective treatments and drugs. In addition, the I-SPY trial will test the concept of personalized medicine by leveraging the molecular tools that have been developed over the last decade with the potential to identify and test new biomarkers as well.
The second Safeway Foundation-funded research initiative comes from the University of California, which is launching an unprecedented statewide collaboration for breast cancer patients with the goal of designing and testing new approaches to research, technology and health care delivery. The project, the ATHENA Breast Health Network, will initially involve 150,000 women throughout California who will be screened for breast cancer and followed for years through the five UC medical centers. The Safeway Foundation provided a $4.8 million grant, which will be coupled with a $5.3 million grant from the University of California.
The medical centers involved in this initiative are UC San Francisco, which will serve as the host campus, UC Davis, UC Los Angeles, UC San Diego and UC Irvine. Also participating in the collaboration are the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, the Northern California Cancer Center, Quantum Leap Healthcare Collaborative, the National Cancer Institute’s BIG Health Consortium and the Center for Medical Technology Policy.
Last year Safeway joined with UCSF to enable the nationwide launch of BreastCancerTrials.org, an online clinical trial matching service dedicated exclusively to breast cancer. Using part of a $2 million grant from Safeway and The Safeway Foundation, the University of California at San Francisco’s Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center developed BreastCancerTrials.org which is now operated as a program of QuantumLeap Healthcare Collaborative, a non-profit corporation. BreastCancerTrials.org provides patient-friendly descriptions and information for over 160 trials now underway at more than 1,500 medical facilities across the country. During October, Safeway will publish messaging about BreastCancerTrials.org on its paper grocery bags and through brochures at the company’s pharmacies to raise awareness of this service.
Safeway has raised nearly $60 million for breast cancer research since 2001, the company stated.