The W.M. Keck Foundation's generous gift of $1.4 million is funding innovative research through a major new program known as the Early Detection Initiative. This program hopes to develop tests that could alert doctors to the earliest signs of cancer. The goal of the Hutchinson Center's Early Detection Initiative, headed by its president and director, Nobel laureate Lee Hartwell, Ph.D., is the early identification of the onset and risk of a wide range of cancers and other diseases so they can be prevented or treated as soon as possible. "The importance of this work is underscored by the fact that survival rates improve dramatically when cancers are diagnosed early, when the disease is still confined to the organ of origin," Hartwell said.
For example, if all colorectal-cancer cases were detected when localized, the overall five-year survival rates could improve from 64 percent to 90 percent. Early detection also is key to managing breast, ovarian, prostate and other cancers. The five-year survival rate for breast- and prostate-cancer patients with localized, early stage disease is 85 percent to 95 percent and remains high at 10 years.
This generous gift will enable the Hutchinson Center to develop, test and implement methods for detecting proteins that signify the presence or risk of cancer in human blood samples. Researchers will use techniques made possible by the rapidly advancing field of proteomics, which attempts to catalog and describe the function of all of the proteins made by a cell or organism. Cancer cells may produce unique proteins, or proteins in different quantities, compared to normal cells.
The W.M. Keck Foundation is one of the nation's largest philanthropic organizations. Established in 1954 by the late William Myron Keck, founder of the Superior Oil Company, the Foundation's grant making is focused primarily on exemplary medical research, scientific, and engineering programs throughout the United States. The Foundation also maintains a program for liberal arts colleges and a Southern California Grant Program that provides support in the areas of civic and community services, health care and hospitals, pre-collegiate education, and the arts.
Others funding the Early Detection Initiative are the Paul G. Allen Foundation for Medical Research and California businessman, Donald J. Listwin.
