PDP establishes breast cancer research fund

PDP Executive Director Kelly Bradham (right) announces the initial gift to establish the Prairie Dragon Paddlers Breast Cancer Research Fund at the Cancer Center at Illinois. She is pictured here with Andreas Cangellaris (left), provost at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Rohit Bhargava (center), director of the Cancer Center at Illinois.

The Prairie Dragon Paddlers Breast Cancer Research Fund was established in 2018 at the Cancer Center at Illinois on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Helping to support and advance breast cancer research is part of PDP’s mission, and the gift prompted the first designated, named fund to be created at the engineering-driven cancer research center.

Recent examples of research support focused on better understanding of the role of certain genes on breast cancer progression, particularly implications for triple negative breast cancer, with the ultimate objective of controlling cancer growth and tumor invasion to other tissues. Another area of research support involved testing combination therapies to prevent cancer cells from adapting to treatments in order to increasing survivability.