About Pediatric Cancer Foundation
With its national headquarters in Tampa, the Pediatric Cancer Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding research to eliminate childhood cancer. Our focus is to fund research to find less toxic, more targeted therapies by partnering with leading hospitals nationwide.
How do we do it?
PCF relies on five primary sources of funds for its financial support: individual contributions, corporate contributions, planned giving, grants and fundraising events. All of the money we raise is dedicated to one program: The Sunshine Project.
For the past 19 years, the Foundation has donated over $4 million to researchers. For the first 15 years, we funded seed grants at St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital and H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in Tampa, All Children’s Research Institute in St. Petersburg, the University of Florida in Gainesville, and the University of Miami School of Medicine.
Great headway was made with these projects, but progress was slow. While 80% of children are receiving treatment and their chances of survival are good – due to research in the last 20 years - 20% of children are not surviving because no substantial research has been done to treat their cancers. We wanted to address the 20% that had not seen an increase in survival rates.
The Sunshine Project
PCF realized the only way to speed up the process was to encourage leading doctors and researchers to work together. In 2005, PCF formed The Sunshine Project, an innovative collaboration with one goal: to bring together the nation’s top doctors and researchers to fast-track new treatments and increase the survival rate for children battling cancer.
The creation of The Sunshine Project, though simple in theory, was complex in nature. But by establishing this program, PCF has developed a business model unlike any other in the field of pediatric cancer research. We have essentially capitalized on the strengths of researchers from all different fields of science and streamlined the process, which has accelerated the development of new treatments.
Best of all, PCF has proven that this model works. Since 2005, we have implemented the groundwork necessary to introduce several new drugs into clinical trials. New compounds are currently being tested in these trials and hold great promise for children who have not experienced positive results under the standard treatment protocol.
Why is The Sunshine Project unique?
The Sunshine Project is the first of its kind in the field of pediatric cancer research.
Investigators are performing three vital phases of research simultaneously. Basic Science, Translational Research and Clinical Trials are the major research components that not only allow doctors to identify new agents in fighting cancer, but also help researchers to understand the cancer cells’ response to the drug. In identifying new treatment options through clinical trials, researchers will be focusing on developing treatments that target only specific cancer-causing molecules in the body, unlike more traditional treatments that often prove toxic to healthy cells.
Because the new gene-targeted therapies are less toxic than traditional treatment, it is also more effective because it targets the source of the cancer and does not compromise the rest of the body by eliminating the immune system, which many times leads to death.
We currently work with leading doctors from around the United States from the following principle institutions: H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center - Tampa, FL; All Children’s Hospital - St. Petersburg, FL; MD Anderson Cancer Center - Orlando, FL; Nemours - Jacksonville, FL; St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital - Tampa, FL; The Children’s Hospital at Montefiore - Bronx, NY; University of Florida - Shands Cancer Center - Gainesville, FL; and the University of Miami - Sylvester Cancer Center - Miami, FL.
Through The Sunshine Project, we are directly addressing the 20% of children for whom the standard protocol of chemotherapy and radiation is not successful. We are one of the only research-funding organizations focused solely on early phase pediatric cancer research.
This means that via The Sunshine Project, PCF is in the forefront of developing treatments and drugs for less common and less curable childhood cancers. Research of more common forms of cancers has increased a child’s survival rate to nearly 80% - up from approximately 56% just 20 years ago.
This is what research can do – save children’s lives.
