2012 Grants Announced

The Gastric Cancer Foundation has approved 2012 grants totaling $228,950 to continue support of the Gastric Cancer Registry and Genomics Project at Stanford University. In approving these grants, the GCF Board of Trustees affirmed its commitment to these projects, which establish a strong scientific underpinning for gastric cancer research.

GCF launched the Gastric Cancer Registry in collaboration with the Stanford Cancer Center in April 2011. Aggressive gastric cancer research requires a resource of statistically significant, pertinent information about patients and their families. No such clinical database existed until the Gastric Cancer Foundation recognized this fundamental gap and partnered with Stanford to create a vehicle for meeting the need. Data collected in the registry will fuel important new research to improve prevention, early detection and treatment of gastric cancer.

GCF is the primary funder of the Genomics Project, which utilizes high-performance computing and storage to conduct state-of-the-art genomic analysis of gastric cancer tissue and DNA samples. Completed screenings have enabled development of personalized treatment strategies to target the unique characteristics of a patient’s tumor. Early work has demonstrated proof-of-concept and enabled researchers to seek multi-million dollar grants for large-scale research.

As these important grants were approved, the Gastric Cancer Foundation Board of Directors also adopted ambitious 2012 fundraising goals to raise the resources required to launch an aggressive new research initiative to engage researchers from leading institutions across the country in innovative gastric cancer research.