The BC Cancer Foundation has received the largest known philanthropic investment toward lung cancer research and care, totalling $15.3 million.
In a news release on Thursday, the foundation said the gift will help an area in cancer research that has long been stigmatized and underfunded.
“Far too many families in B.C. and around the world have experienced pain and loss at the hands of lung cancer. Today marks a critical moment in the race to change outcomes,” said president and CEO Sarah Roth in a news release.
“On behalf of all individuals with this devastating illness, I thank the Leon Judah Blackmore Foundation for the hope they’ve provided.”
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death in B.C. and around the world. Six people die of it every day in the province.
“A donation of this scope gives hope to late stage patients like myself,” said Alan Soon, a non-smoker who was diagnosed two years ago and now has advanced-stage lung cancer.
“It shows empathy to people with a cancer that has long been stigmatized and has not seen an equitable level of support. We hope that new treatment development will allow us to live with lung cancer as a chronic disease and to die with it, not of it.”
The goal is to start work right away to develop new detection methods, treatments, and ways to stop tumour resistance, led by Dr. Stephen Lam with the BC Cancer Agency.
Blackmore, who took part in a lung-cancer prevention project led by Lam in 1996, was a real estate developer in Vancouver and Victoria. He died in 2015.
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