Foundation News

Wear a wristband for Noelle

Noelle is 5…she has acute lymphoblastic leukemia. She has been getting chemotherapy for nearly half her young life. Noelle saw pink ribbons and pink M&Ms and asked her dad, “Why are they pink?” He told her they are special because they raise money to help find a cure for breast cancer. “That must be much worse than leukemia,” she said.

Buy a green Childhood Cancer Foundation “We Will Win” wristband – buy some for your friends. Get your workplace to sell them. Wear them. Help find a cure for Noelle and her 10,000 friends across Canada . Show them you care. Only $2.50 each (includes shipping and handling). Call Rachna at 1-800-363-1062 to place your order.
View wristband here!

Holiday Cards Support our Foundation

Upcoming Events

Foundation’s New National Event a Great Success

Our new Foundation fundraising event, a pint-sized sponsored walk for kids five and under and their families, was piloted on October 1 at the Upper Canada Mall in Newmarket , Ontario . We were helped by about 40 students from Newmarket High School , and we raised more than $4,000 and sold hundreds of our Foundation wristbands. We’re still working on the best name for our new event. If you have any great ideas or bursts of creativity, call or e-mail us!

2005 Gold Ribbon Gala

On Monday, November 21 we host our Second Annual Gold Ribbon Gala at the Westin Harbour Castle Hotel in Toronto. Please consider joining us, or supporting this major fundraising event for the Foundation in any way you can. For more information please visit our website.

For information about tickets, silent auction prize donations or sponsorship, please call Christina Chen at 416 489-6440 x15 or 1-800-363-1062 or [email protected]

Fundraising Success

Harley-Davidson

There are now five Harley-Davidson Motorcycle Dealerships who will have a wristband to support Foundation programs (Vancouver , Richmond Hill , Ottawa , Montreal , Moncton ). Thanks to Bob Davies of Davies Harley-Davidson in Richmond Hill for spearheading this program.

In the news

Down Syndrome May Hold Clues to Fighting Cancer
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112595866884032091,00.html
By Amy Dockser Marcus
Researchers are working to unravel a medical mystery that they hope will lead to new ways to fight cancer: They're trying to figure out why people with Down syndrome are less likely to get certain common cancers than the general population, and why they respond better to treatment in other cancers. Recent research shows that people with Down syndrome, a genetic condition with a range of physical and intellectual disabilities, have a significantly lower-than-expected rate of breast cancer, lung cancer, mouth cancer and other common solid tumors. They are at significantly greater risk of getting a rare type of leukemia, called acute myeloid leukemia (AML), when they are children -- but they have a substantially higher survival rate and lower relapse rate than children in the general population. Now, studies are being done at Children's Hospital Boston, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the University of Chicago , the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit , and other centers around the country, to find out why this is. By understanding the various characteristics of Down syndrome that relate to cancer, researchers hope to develop new cancer drugs, and identify specific targets for cancer treatments, that will benefit all patients. In the case of acute myeloid leukemia, efforts center around a genetic mutation that appears to be found exclusively in AML patients who have Down syndrome. Some scientists say this mutation makes the children more responsive to the chemotherapy drugs used to treat it. The Children's Oncology Group, a consortium of pediatric cancer centers in the U.S. and Canada , is following over 200 children with Down syndrome for five years who are being treated for or have had leukemia hoping to find new insights into why.

Levofloxacin Prevents Infection in Neutropenic Cancer Patients
http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2005/09/07/professional/links/20050907clin008.html
By Reuters Health
Fears of bacterial resistance have generally prevented the prophylactic use of fluoroquinolones in patients with cancer and neutropenia. However, two placebo-controlled clinical trials reported in The New England Journal of Medicine on September 8th show that prophylactic levofloxacin during periods of neutropenia reduces the incidence of febrile episodes and other infection-related outcomes. Italian researchers led by Dr. Albano Del Favero at the Universita di Perugia included in their prospective study 760 consecutive hospitalized patients with leukemia, lymphoma or solid tumors in whom neutropenia was expected to persist for more than 7 days.

A Medical Checklist for Disasters
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112604864933933301,00.html
By Laura Landro
For anyone with a medical condition or disability, the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina provides a grim reminder of the need for preparations in the event of a natural disaster or other emergency. Medical experts are renewing calls for emergency preparedness, urging patients with special medical needs to plan for the worst no matter where they live -- and to take extra steps to protect the most defenseless family members such as children and the elderly. People with disabilities or chronic health problems such as diabetes, asthma, heart disease, AIDS and cancer depend on ready access to doctors' offices, pharmacies, medical-supply shops and hospitals. While health-care groups and government agencies work to provide alternative emergency care in a crisis, the situation in New Orleans shows that such help isn't always swiftly available. The American Academy of Pediatrics, which is developing a network of pediatric professionals to accompany organizations responding to disasters on a short-term notice, offers family-readiness kits that can be downloaded from its Web site ( www.aap.org) including sample emergency-information forms for children with diabetes, leukemia and heart failure.

What are you hoping for? 

Please e-mail your thoughts, needs and expectations of this service to Mary Lye at [email protected]. We want this service to be useful to you.

The information in this e-mail message including any attachments is intended only for the named recipients above and may contain confidential or privileged information. If you have received this message in error, or are not the named recipient(s), please immediately notify the sender by replying to the message and deleting all copies of it from your computer.

To unsubscribe, please reply by returning this message.