FYI - there's an article in today's Wall Street Journal about private funding for research into rare cancers. The focus is on one family's quest for funding into adenoid cystic carcinoma, a salivary-gland cancer.

The article is available here .

-- Leslie

Thanks Leslie

I'm so new to all this. But from a dummies point of view, would it not be a good idea to start 1 study for several rare cancers?.

Cures are often discovered for one disease while working on another. It's just happenstance.

Otherwise this theory would support peoples claims about pharmiceuticals advertising and trying to force drugs on people. Would it not? I know I'm not making a whole lot of sense, but $700,000.00 is a small amount of money, but if combined with several rare cancers you would have a few million for startup funding.

Just my thoughts. Just hoping for a cure.

And once again, that article is in the OCF news section...... Believe it or not, Shel and I DO work hard at keeping it up to date with important related stories.

Also please remember that cancer is hundreds of different, unique diseases.... therein lies the problem of any universal mechanism that works for everything. Given that we are now working towards targeted therapies (if you haven't read about these please see the main site page on them like Erbitux in the treatment part of the web site) they are more specific to a particular disease than ever, with the goal that they could be formulated and eventually targeted to a specific person's genetic make up as a person - and as a disease.