Our daughter’s fight became our mission to help other children survive.
Twenty-five years ago, our 12-year-old daughter was diagnosed with neuroblastoma. Doctors gave her a 45% chance of survival. Seven months later, after she relapsed, they told us she wasn’t going to make it.
But we believed someone, somewhere, could save her.
We began searching—reading medical papers, attending conferences, and traveling across the country to meet leading pediatric cancer experts. We found doctors who saved her.
Since then, our daughter has relapsed six more times and endured more than 450 weeks of chemotherapy (mild and heavy), seven major surgeries, extensive radiation, developed breast cancer, and had a double mastectomy.
Today, she remains on treatment, is married, beautiful, and happy.
Her fight has been brutal. And still, she is one of the lucky ones.
Early in her journey, we became close with eight other families whose children were fighting the same cancer. One by one, as our daughter continued to relapse, those children died.
When the last of them was gone, we started End Kids Cancer.
Our Approach
Funding better, less-toxic treatments
Neuroblastoma is a cancer of the nervous cells outside the brain and is the most common solid tumor diagnosed in infants. Children with high-risk or relapsed neuroblastoma face an especially difficult fight.
Treatment can involve intensive chemotherapy, major surgery, radiation, antibodies, and bone marrow transplants. These treatments can save lives, but 65% of survivors face serious late effects and 42% face life-threatening health problems years later.
Children need treatments that do more than help them survive cancer. They need treatments that give them the best possible chance to grow up healthy.
That is why End Kids Cancer helps fund research that harnesses the immune system to recognize and kill cancer cells. Our first priority is always improving survival. When promising approaches appear similarly effective, we favor treatments designed to reduce toxicity and lifelong harm.
With the support of our donors, we have helped fund work involving:
One important clinical trial we supported used a bivalent vaccine to target two markers on neuroblastoma cells and reduced relapse rates by 50% for kids who have relapsed for the second time. The vaccine represented an important step toward treatments designed to fight cancer while reducing the harm associated with conventional therapy.
Credit goes to the researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering—and to the donors who helped make their work possible.
In addition, the physicians on our Medical Advisory Board are among the leading experts advancing neuroblastoma treatments. Their research and clinical experience influence the care children receive at cancer centers across the country.
Their consistent track record of developing treatments that become the standard of care has strengthened our confidence in supporting their research initiatives. This proven success has enabled us to confidently invest in their cancer research projects, even at the pre-proof-of-concept stage. Multi-million-dollar investments from the Food and Drug Administration and the National Cancer Institute have followed our early support. While securing funding for such early-stage research is typically difficult, their exceptional success rate ensures our donors’ contributions generate meaningful impact.
Navigation for Families
No family should have to search alone
When a child is diagnosed with cancer, parents must make life-changing decisions while they are frightened, overwhelmed, and unfamiliar with a complicated medical system.
Too often, families—and their child’s physicians—do not know that newer treatments or more experienced specialists are available. When frontline treatment fails, only a limited number of cancer centers have deep experience treating a child’s particular cancer or relapse.
We understand that struggle because we lived it.
That is why we created Steps to Hope, a free guide that helps families.
This is very important: The guide’s underlying theme is “Trust but Verify.”
The guide’s impact has been recognized nationally. Congresswoman Lois Capps, a former nurse, read it and sent it to Vice President Joe Biden’s office, leading to our invitations to the White House Cancer Moonshot Summit to represent pediatric cancer research. Dr. Fernando Stein, past President of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said, “This guide belongs in every pediatrician’s office.”
The reviews that matter most are the many we have received from parents whose children are fighting cancer.
The guide is available for free on this website under the resource tab.
Prevention: Protecting Future Generations
Helping parents reduce harmful exposures
Our environment has changed dramatically. Man-made chemicals are on the rise. 325,000 man-made chemicals have been produced, and only 25% have been tested for safety. Man-made chemicals are found in our air, water, food, soil, and many everyday products. Research has associated exposure to certain chemicals—especially during pregnancy and early childhood—with cancer and other serious health conditions.
Parents deserve practical information they can understand and use.
With guidance from leading experts in children’s environmental health, End Kids Cancer has developed a prevention program. We continue to improve the program, which gives expectant parents and families with young children simple steps to reduce children’s exposure to potentially harmful chemicals.
Our goal is not to frighten families. It is to empower them.
Help Give More Children a Future
We know what it feels like to be told that there is no hope.
We also know what can happen when determined families, extraordinary doctors, and compassionate donors refuse to give up.
Your gift can help:
Our daughter received a chance to grow up. Together, we can help give that chance to more children.
PLEASE DONATE TODAY
