Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C), the nonprofit organization that helps fund various Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC) investigators, returns to prime time television for its third broadcast Friday, Sept. 7, at 7 p.m.
The hourlong show featuring Hollywood celebrities, recording artists and sports figures will include special performances and a celebrity phone/multi-media bank that will allow viewers and callers to interact with celebrities.
All public donations raised from the program will go directly to cancer research. SU2C is a program of the Entertainment Industry Foundation.
The TV special will be broadcast live and commercial-free on ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC. Actress Gwyneth Paltrow and Joel Gallen of Tenth Planet Productions will serve as executive producers for the fundraising special, to be broadcast from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. HBO, HBO Latino, Bio, Lifetime Movie Network, MLB Network and VH1 are among the cable outlets that have committed to simulcast the event.
SU2C was founded to provide additional funding for promising cancer research. The organization supports “Dream Teams” of prominent cancer investigators who agree to work together on specific cancer issues.
Carlos Arteaga, M.D., associate director for Clinical Research and director of the Breast Cancer Program at VICC, and Ingrid Mayer, M.D., MSCI, clinical director of the Breast Cancer Team, are members of the SU2C ‘PI3K in Women’s Cancer’ Dream Team, which is studying a group of genes involved in breast, ovarian and endometrial cancer progression.
In addition to preclinical work in the laboratory, the Vanderbilt team is enrolling patients with PI3K mutations in clinical trials of inhibitor drugs to attack these cancers. Arteaga is also a co-principal investigator of this SU2C Dream Team.
Jeffrey Sosman, M.D., director of the VICC Melanoma Program and co-leader of the Signal Transduction Program, is a member of the Melanoma Dream Team that is investigating the use of targeted therapy in patients with BRAF wild-type metastatic melanoma — a subtype of melanoma for which there are currently few treatment options.
William Pao, M.D., Ph.D., director of Personalized Cancer Medicine and director of the Division of Hematology and Oncology, has also received financial support through the SU2C Innovative Research Grants program.
For more information about the fundraising organization and the telecast, visit www.standup2cancer.org.
