Fundraiser Tops $1M for Lung Cancer Research

NEW YORK CITY-The industry turned out in droves to support Uniting Against Lung Cancer in its annual fundraising event, held Nov. 17 at Gotham Hall. Roxanne Donovan, a member of the Uniting Against Lung Cancer board, tells GlobeSt.com that this year’s Joan’s Legacy: Uniting Against Lung Cancer Strolling Supper with Blues & News fundraiser has brought in north of $1 million, up from last year’s $900,000. More than 700 guests, with a heavy representation from commercial real estate, attended the gala event, emceed by ABC News anchor Bill Ritter.

“I really believe we’re on the verge of a new ear in lung cancer,” said Dr. Avi Spira of Boston University School of Medicine, recipient of this year’s Caine Halter Hope Now Award on Wednesday evening. Spira, whose work focuses on earlier detection and treatments to improve quality of life for patients, said researchers could accomplish “amazing things” with the help of organizations like Uniting Against Lung Cancer.

Spira noted that federal research grant programs provide relatively little funding for research into lung cancer, which claimed 160,000 American lives in 2009—a higher toll than those of colon, breast, prostate and pancreatic cancers combined. The funding for high-risk projects is especially meager, added Spira. He was in such a position a decade ago, but today an early diagnostic test for lung cancer is making its way through the Food and Drug Administration’s approvals process.

The evening’s other award recipient, newscaster Heather Unruh and WCVB TV5 in Boston, told Wednesday’s audience, “It feels so privileged to be in a profession where we can give a voice to the voiceless and slowly chip away at the stigma surrounding this ugly disease. Nobody deserves lung cancer.”

While lung cancer is often perceived strictly as a byproduct of smoking, Unruh’s series focused on young, athletic lung cancer patients who had never smoked. Nor had the namesake of the award and the fundrasing event, Joan Scarangello McNieve, a nonsmoker who lost her nine-month battle with the disease in 2001 at age 47. Veteran NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw, who presented both awards, observed, “By our presence here tonight, we know Joan was a victor.”

Founded in ‘01 as Joan’s Legacy: The Joan Scarangello Foundation, the organization changed its name last year to Uniting Against Lung Cancer, bringing other groups into the fold. “We changed our name to enable every other family and organization to gather under our nonprofit umbrella, so we needed a more ‘umbrella’ name,” Donovan told GlobeSt.com last year, a member of the Uniting Against Lung Cancer board. “We believe that we will only beat lung cancer by uniting with other families, and we needed to change our name – to make it less about one person and more about the goal – to allow that to happen.”

The night commemorated Lung Cancer Awareness Month in New York City with a strolling supper, a live performance by Grammy-winning singer Delbert McClinton and a silent auction. Among the items auctioned off were a voice-mail greeting recorded by Joan Rivers, a visit to the set of Two and a Half Men and a kind of walk-on role in the next David Baldacci novel, by way of the bestselling author naming a character after the highest bidder.