What do Verizon, CarMax, and State Farm all have in common? They all offer volunteer grant programs.

Volunteer grant programs, also known as “Dollars for Doers” programs, are charitable giving programs set up by companies to reward employees for giving back to their communities. Companies provide monetary donations to eligible nonprofits like ours as a way to recognize employees who volunteer.

Volunteer grants are a relatively new form of corporate giving and they’re widely offered among Fortune 500 companies and are catching on at smaller companies as well.

For instance:

• Verizon’s Volunteer Program provides $750 grants for 50 volunteer hours
• State Farm’s Good Neighbor Grant Program recognizes employees with a $500 grant for 40 volunteer hours.
• CarMax’s volunteer grant program awards $10 for every hour volunteered up to $10,000.

In fact, hundreds of companies offer volunteer grant programs with donations generally ranging from $10-15 per hour volunteered. This means that our organization will not only receive the help provided by our amazing volunteers, but we’ll be given monetary support from their employers as well!

How do volunteer grant programs work?

Volunteer grant programs are an easy way for volunteers to secure an additional monetary contribution for our organization without having to take out their checkbooks.

Volunteer grant programs consist of five steps:

1. Employee volunteers with nonprofit organization
2. Employee volunteer determines if their company offers volunteer grants — you can search for your employer’s volunteer grant guidelines at https://skyfoundationinc.org/double-your-donation-in-5-minutes/ to find company-specific program guidelines, requirements, and forms.
3. Employee volunteer submits the grant request, either electronically or using a paper form.
4. Nonprofit validates the grant request — we confirm for the individual’s employer that the individual is in fact a volunteer with our organization.
5. Company cuts a check!

If you’re already volunteering with us, please take a few minutes to check if your employer (or your spouse’s employer) offers volunteer grants at https://skyfoundationinc.org/double-your-donation-in-5-minutes/ — grants that could equal hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars for us to further our important mission.

Want to help?

If you are on one of our Boards or Committees, you already qualify!  Another way to volunteer with Sky is to assist at our in person events and in the production of our events.  Please contact Annie at our office to learn more information at 248-385-5143.

You can immediately gain access to detailed program guidelines offered by your employer and assess your eligibility by searching our database of companies that offer volunteer grant programs at https://skyfoundationinc.org/double-your-donation-in-5-minutes/.

We’ll provide you with the following information:

• Up-to-date, company-specific program guidelines
• Minimum volunteer hours required to qualify for a matching donation
• Links to the online matching gift request forms or downloadable PDFs offered by your employer
• Our contact information (Tax ID, address, fundraising contact), which you may need for your matching gift request

We appreciate you taking a few minutes to double your impact.

For nonprofit organizations, every dollar counts.

In this article, we’re going to explore exactly what to expect when working with matching gifts and how to make the most of this incredible fundraising opportunity.

Matching Gift and Volunteer Grant information provided by

What are corporate matching gift programs?

Employee matching gift programs are a type of corporate philanthropy set up to encourage employees to give back to their communities. These companies encourage community outreach by making donations to the same nonprofits that their employees have donated to. These programs have become quite widespread, but many donors have not heard of them or aren’t aware of their own match-eligibility. $4-7 billion in matching gift revenue is left on the table each year.

The specifics of these programs vary from company to company, but the elements that shape these guidelines are always the same:

• Match ratio: This defines what kind of donation the company will make in relation to the employee’s initial contribution. A 1:1 ratio indicates that the company will donate the exact same amount, doubling the contribution to the employee’s chosen nonprofit.
• Minimum and maximum: The minimum refers to the amount an employee must donate to qualify for a matching gift. The maximum is the total amount that a company will donate in matching contributions per employee annually.
• Employee status: Sometimes, the employee’s role at the company can affect the match that they qualify for. For example, Gap Inc. offers a $1,000 maximum to part-time employees and a $10,000 maximum to Senior VP’s.
• Nonprofit eligibility: Some programs offer different matches based on the nonprofit being donated to. ExxonMobil offers a higher match for donations made to educational institutions than for donations made to cultural organizations.
• Deadline: Every program identifies a deadline when the matching gift request must be submitted by the employee. This deadline can be either a firm date (December 31st is common) or a threshold based on the date of the initial donation (90 days after donation
  is made).

Thousands of companies offer matching gift programs. A few examples include:

• Johnson & Johnson — Triples donations with a 2:1 match for current employees while also doubling donations (a 1:1 match) for retirees.
• Bank of America — Matches donations 1:1 up to $5,000 annually per employee.
• Home Depot — Matches donations 1:1 up to $3,000 annually per employee.

The impact of these programs can be substantial! Microsoft has been known to match over $48 million worth of employee donations to schools and 501(c)(3) nonprofits in a single year. Did you know that more than 18 million employees work for companies with matching gift programs? You might be one of them.

Want to help Sky Foundation, Inc?

With your help, we’ll be able to better raise awareness and funding for pancreatic cancer research.  You can help us reach these goals by searching for your own match-eligibility. You can gain access to detailed information about your employer’s corporate giving program by searching our database of companies with matching gift programs at:  https://skyfoundationinc.org/double-your-donation-in-5-minutes/.

We’ll provide you with the following information:

• Up-to-date, company-specific program guidelines
• Links to the online matching gift request forms or downloadable PDFs offered by your employer
• Our contact information (Tax ID, address, fundraising contact), which you may need for your matching gift request

If your company isn’t listed, make sure to check with your company’s HR department. It’s possible that your employer offers matching gifts.

We appreciate you taking a few minutes to double your donation!

A team of researchers from Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center have discovered how pancreatic cancer cells spread in the liver, which could be key to developing treatments to slow it down and prolong patients’ lives.

The study, led by Dr. Tami Rubinek, head of the hospital’s oncology research lab, together with Ph.D. student Shani Journo, under the auspices of professor Ido Wolf, found that a mutation causing the disappearance of the “p15” and “p16” proteins appears more in liver metastasis and less in pancreatic cancer tumors in the pancreas or other areas of the body, such as the lungs or abdomen.

The researchers were able to show that when these proteins disappear, the cancer cell changes its properties and metabolic activity in a way that makes it easier for it to grow in the unique environment of the liver.

The liver is often the “killing organ,” Wolf told JNS, meaning patients often die when pancreatic cancer spreads to their liver.

In general, pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest cancers. Wolf said that once the cancer starts to spread, patients generally only live between six months and a year.

There are between 800 and 900 cases of pancreatic cancer diagnosed in Israel a year, according to the Health Ministry website. In the United States, around 60,000 new cases are diagnosed. And, Wolf said, the numbers are steadily rising.

He said that the next step would be to find treatments based on the findings of the study.

Wolf cautioned that it is unlikely the information will lead to a cure for the cancer. However, he said it would likely lead to treatments that could prolong patients’ lives.

Until this study—the largest of its kind, including 17,000 pancreatic cancer patients from around the world, whose information was entered into a database of FoundationOne, one of the world’s largest cancer genomics companies—it was assumed that all pancreatic cancers were similar, with no subgroups.

“The study … reveals the Achilles’ heel of the cancer cell,” Wolf said.

Dr. Ayelet Erez of the Weizmann Institute of Science, an expert in the dynamics of cellular metabolism who is unconnected to the Tel Aviv research, confirmed the novelty of the study and its potential implications.

“The novelty of the paper is in promoting the concept that the metabolic landscape of the distant organ affects metastasis tropism of primary cancers,” she told JNS. “The results of this work have translational implications as they expose metabolic vulnerabilities of the metastasizing cells that can be targeted for therapy.”

The post Israeli medical discovery could help stop spread of pancreatic cancer appeared first on JNS.org

This article was reposted on Cleveland Jewish News.

Let’s Win featured a great article on one of Sky Foundation’s funded researchers, Arnav Mehta, MD, PhD.  It discusses how Dr. Mehta was brought on board to help interpret and analyze that data for COVID-19.  

Although COVID-19 is not his area of expertise, analyzing data is.  “From my perspective, I wanted to help anywhere I could, and since I’m trained as a mathematician it was a way I could contribute and maybe help make a difference during that really awful time,” Mehta says.

The article then proceeds to dive into Dr. Mehta’s research and is main area of expertise. 

Mehta is no stranger to the rigors of medicine and research. Today, as a physician, he is bringing his clinical expertise to the treatment and care of patients with gastrointestinal (GI) cancers like gastroesophageal, colon, and pancreatic cancer. As a scientist, his research interests include immunology, cancer biology, single-cell genomics, and mathematics, applied for the discovery of new cancer therapies.

“When people ask me what I do, I always say that first and foremost I’m a doctor who has the privilege of taking care of cancer patients with disease in their gut or abdomen,” he explains. “As a scientist, I care about finding new therapies to treat these cancers. So I study human biology and do experiments on tissue samples derived from patient tumors.”

Medicine and science have embraced digitization to better understand the biology of a disease. And much more information is aggregated around different factors that make up a disease, including DNA, proteins, enzymes, cells, tissues, even ecosystems. It’s this proliferation of so-called “big data” that will yield a better understanding of the basic biology of many diseases. And that’s where Mehta’s training as a mathematician comes into play.

“There’s no getting around it that in our current era we now generate large data sets in the lab, and the question is what do we do with that data, how do we analyze it,” Mehta says. “Biology and mathematics are starting to converge. I’m a math guy, and I’m used to big data, large data sets. And I’m someone who wants to tackle and solve a problem. So my career path spans seeing patients, treating patients, and finding better ways to treat them using my expertise in other fields.”

Mehta completed his undergraduate studies at Duke University in mathematics and chemistry. He then completed his combined M.D. and Ph.D. degrees at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the California Institute of Technology, respectively. He performed his Ph.D. work in the laboratory of Nobel laureate Dr. David Baltimore, during which time he discovered novel roles of microRNAs in hematopoietic stem cell function and in leukemia. Mehta subsequently completed his residency in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, followed by a combined hematology/oncology fellowship at MGH, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (Boston).

As a fellow, he completed his postdoctoral research in the laboratories of Dr. Eric Lander and Dr. Nir Hacohen. During that time, he developed experimental and computational methods to study resistance mechanisms of pancreatic, gastroesophageal, and colorectal cancers using single-cell and spatial genomics technologies on patient samples and in vitro models. His work has been published in multiple journals, including Immunity, Cell Stem Cell, Nature Immunology, Nature Genetics, Nature Cancer, Cancer Discovery, Science Translational Medicine, and Cell Reports.

Mehta’s research interests also include studies of tumor cell plasticity and resistance mechanisms using cutting-edge single-cell genomics and lineage tracing technologies. He has received numerous awards, including the prestigious Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Physician Scientist Fellowship.

To read the article in full, visit Let’s Win’s website here.

The Michigan Cancer Consortium is a statewide partnership of public and private organizations that collaborate to reduce the human and economic burden of cancer among the citizens of Michigan. Sky’s Founder, Sheila Sky Kasselman was nominated for their Inspiration Award at their recent event this November.  We are honored to have our founder as such an important part of the cancer community.

Read more about the Michigan Cancer Consortium here.  

In an article recently posted by Let’s Win, they talk about the overwhelming facts that pancreatic cancer is expected to be the second most common cause of cancer deaths in the U.S.

Although it is considered a relatively rare cancer, inherited gene mutations can increase a person’s risk of developing the disease. For most cancers, early detection contributes to longer survival. Yet the majority of pancreatic cancer patients are diagnosed in later stages, when surgery is no longer an option. That’s partly due to the fact that in earlier stages many people may not have symptoms indicative of pancreatic cancer, making it much more difficult to detect.

A new set of national guidelines published by the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE) was released in May 2022. These guidelines recommend annual pancreatic cancer screening for patients who are at increased risk because of genetic susceptibility. While earlier guidelines had restricted screening to only those individuals with BRCA1/2 mutations who had a family history of pancreatic cancer, this new set of guidelines now recommends screening for all patients with the gene variations, regardless of family history.

“Fewer than 25 percent of patients with BRCA1/2 who go on to develop pancreatic cancer actually have a family history of the disease,” explains gastroenterologist Amitabh Chak, M.D., Professor of Medicine and Oncology at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and the Brenda and Marshall B. Brown Master Clinician in Innovation and Discovery at University Hospitals UH Seidman Cancer Center (Cleveland, Ohion). “We would potentially miss some [pancreatic] cancers among this group if we only screen those with a family history of the disease.”

Although there’s no doubt screening of high-risk individuals may prove to be an important component of earlier detection, these new guidelines also highlight potential risks resulting from false positive screening test results. Providers are urged to counsel patients before enrolling them in a high-risk screening program.

The article continues on to discuss Data leading to new guidelines and how talking to patients is vital.  Click here to read the whole article.

In an article featured by Yahoo News, it discusses a new therapy approached to battle pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic cancer may be reversed by a so-called “gremlin” therapy, scientists have found in a landmark discovery.

Early findings suggest a gene and a protein known as Grem1, or “gremlin”, could be pivotal in controlling and combatting the illness.

Pancreatic cancer has a notoriously high mortality rate, with just seven per cent of patients surviving for five years or more. Every year, more than 10,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with the disease, with around 9,000 deaths.

Scientists from the Institute of Cancer Research conducted studies in mice and on mini pancreases made in a laboratory, where they manipulated the level of the gremlin protein in the system.

This article continues to discuss ways this therapy can ‘reverse the fate’ of dangerous cells, how it is an important and fundamental discovery, and enhances understanding of origins of pancreatic cancer.  To read the full article, click here.

An article by Intelligent Living discusses a new tool to “sniff out” pancreatic cancer in patients.   

A researcher team at the University of Pennsylvania has developed an electronic nose (e-nose) that could sniff out signs of cancer from blood samples. In lab tests, the device successfully detected a range of cancer types with over 90% accuracy.

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are chemicals that have a high vapor pressure at room temperature and are responsible for odors, with different sources emitting different mixtures. The human nose is a sensitive instrument that can detect subtle differences in the makeup and ratio of these VOCs and distinguish whether that odor is coffee, flowers, or lemons.

In 1971, Nobel Prize winner Pauling and his team published what is considered the first report revealed (by gas chromatography) the presence of hundreds of VOCs in human urine and breath. Since then, scientists have explored how VOCs given off by cancer could be detected as part of a diagnostic system. For example, sniffer dogs have shown great promise in detecting cancer in patients’ blood with almost 97% accuracy, while non-invasive breath tests can quickly detect exhaled breath profiles associated with neck and head cancers with 80% accuracy.

For the new study, the team used an e-nose to analyze blood plasma samples for signs of hard-to-detect cancers, like ovarian and pancreatic cancers. The e-nose used algorithms that had previously been trained to identify specific VOC combinations with the different cancers, whether they were benign or not, and what stage of progression they were at.

The researchers studied samples from 93 patients – 20 with benign ovarian tumors, 10 with benign pancreatic disease, 20 with ovarian cancer, 13 with pancreatic cancer, and 30 age- and sex-matched controls.

Impressively, the e-nose detected pancreatic cancer with 90% accuracy and ovarian cancer with 95% accuracy. Of those, it differentiated all eight patients who had early-stage cancers, suggesting it could be valuable as a diagnostic tool to find the disease before it’s too late.

Read the full article on Intelligent Living’s website.   

Let’s Win posted an article discussing this major question:

Can a combination of precision radiation therapy and standard chemotherapy be an effective treatment for pancreatic cancer that has spread to the liver, in patients with specific mutations?

Precision medicine is no longer limited to targeted drug therapy; it has also been adopted in radiation therapy. In the past, radiation beams only matched the height and width of the tumor causing significant damage to the surround tissue. Advances in imaging technology have made it possible to locate and treat the tumor more precisely, sparing healthy tissue from radiation exposure.

For carriers of a genetic mutation that makes it harder for tumor cells to repair DNA breaks, researchers are looking at whether the combination of precision radiation and chemotherapy can help patients whose pancreatic cancer has metastasized to the liver.

What Is Conformal Radiation Therapy?

Conformal radiation therapy (CRT) shapes the radiation beams to closely fit the area of the cancer with three-dimensional accuracy. This exact targeting makes it possible to use higher levels of radiation in treatment, in hopes that it will be more effective in shrinking and killing tumors while minimizing damage to nearby tissues.

Understanding Homologous Recombination Deficiency

Cells with homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) are less able to repair double strand breaks in DNA and hence more vulnerable to DNA damaging treatments, such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy. HRD may result from alterations in genes that play a critical role in certain DNA repair mechanisms, including the BRCA genes.

Continue reading the article here to learn how you can participate in the study.  

Twenty years ago, getting a pancreatic cancer diagnosis was very often devastating. The cancer usually wasn’t caught until later stages, partly because the pancreas is tucked behind the stomach, making it hard to detect tumors. Plus, some of the warning signs — abdominal discomfort, back pain, unintended weight loss and fatigue — are easy to overlook or attribute to other conditions. And they often arise late in the game.

The five-year survival rate for this kind of cancer was around 4 percent. For treatment, doctors were able to offer patients only standard chemotherapy, radiation and/or a risky surgery.

Today, however, the five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer has more than doubled. If the disease is caught early and the tumor is small and confined to the pancreas, the survival rate is around 40 percent.

A surge in research funding is partly responsible for this good news. For example, at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), money for pancreatic cancer research rose from $17 million in 1999 to more than $182 million in 2018. Funding by other agencies and organizations has made similar leaps.

With stronger support, pancreatic cancer research is making huge advances. Scientists are developing new ways to screen for this cancer so that it can be caught earlier. Medical experts are also engineering new drugs to treat the cancer and finding innovative ways to repurpose existing therapies and deliver more focused radiation to tumors to shrink them, which can make removing’s them easier.

This article continues on to talk about the great promise in targeted therapy, using repurposed drugs, guided radiation therapy, increased AI technology to read scans and using screening to detect cancer early.  All of which could not happen without the support of nonprofits and its generous donors.  To read the full artcile, visit AARP’s website. 

In an article posted on M Health Lab by Anna Megdell takes a new approach on making a pancreatic cancer tumor react differently.  

Hyaluronic acid, or HA, is a known presence in pancreatic tumors, but a new study from researchers at the University of Michigan Health Rogel Cancer Center shows that hyaluronic acid also acts as food to the cancer cells. These findings, recently published in eLife, provide insight into how pancreatic cancer cells grow and indicate new possibilities to treat them.

“A central driving theme in my research lab is that pancreatic cancer doesn’t respond to the common arsenal of treatment approaches. We need to think about this challenge differently,” said Costas Lyssiotis, Ph.D., the lead investigator on the study. He and his team study the metabolism of pancreatic cancer in preclinical models: how cells obtain nutrients and the spectrum of nutrients they utilize to fuel growth and enable therapeutic resistance.

The tumor microenvironment, or the cells that make up the tumor, are a combination of many different cell types, some malignant, some not. A pancreatic tumor’s microenvironment is highly stromal, meaning the mass itself is mostly comprised of connective tissue and non-cancerous immune cells.

The article proceeds to talk about what the Hyaluronic acid is made of and it’s role in past studies of pancreatic cancer.  

Lyssiotis and his lab wanted to understand hyaluronic acid beyond its contribution to the physiological make-up of pancreatic cancer cells. They considered the density of these tumors, and wondered: If cancer cells aren’t getting access to blood-derived nutrients, how are they getting the nutrients that fuel cell growth and become tumors?

The lab’s new work indicates that one way cells do this is by scavenging the hyaluronic acid itself.

“Hyaluronic acid doesn’t only affect tumors by creating this density, which does make it difficult to treat,” Lyssiotis said. “It is literally a chain of sugars. In retrospect, it makes good sense that the malignant cells are also feeding off hyaluronic acid.”

Lyssiotis says this study demonstrates just how well pancreatic cancer cells scavenge nutrients in order to maintain their survival and growth.

Please click here to visit the U of M Health website to read the full article. 

Sky Foundation has an overarching goal of raising public awareness for pancreatic cancer through educational events and funding scientific research. Pancreatic cancer is a silent cancer, yet it is the third leading cause of all cancer-related deaths in the United States. Symptoms can occur when the cancer has spread to other organs, resulting in a poor prognosis and outcome. Currently, there is a survival rate of 11% after diagnosis and only one-fifth of Americans diagnosed with pancreatic cancer survive for a full year.

Black History Month serves as an extra opportunity to further highlight the need for educational awareness of pancreatic cancer and the incidence within the African American population. I am an African American female, a 14.5-year pancreatic cancer survivor, and a self-proclaimed miracle with multiple blessings. As a Board member of Sky Foundation, I have a broader avenue & opportunity to assist with education for awareness of this terrible disease. I also fundraise for research and offer hope to pancreatic patients with my personal testimony of survival.

Adding to the insidious nature of this cancer, racial/ethnic disparities are well documented that greatly impact the diagnosis, specialist consultation, treatment, and survival outcome of African Americans. This population has the highest incidence of pancreatic cancer than any other racial group. After diagnosis, they are less likely to undergo evaluation by a surgeon or receive surgery than any other racial group in the U.S. However, even when diagnosed the cancer is often at an advanced stage and therefore, inoperable.

As a survivor, sharing my experience includes the need for a second opinion from a highly skilled physician in the specialty of pancreatic cancer, genetic and biomarker testing. It is also highly encouraged to participate in a clinical trial if possible and seeking help with self-advocacy and support.

Sky Foundation’s website provides more information on all areas of this subject.  Please visit the website to learn about the innovative research that Sky funds from coast to coast: www.SkyFoundationInc.org.

Article written by Edna Jackson-Gray

Sheila Kasselman, Sky’s founder, discovered her diabetes, at age 66, two months before she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  Sudden Onset of Diabetes is something we absolutely need to talk about.  Read this great article in the New York Times to educate yourself on the subject.

“Pancreatic cancer is a nasty, stubborn killer that has thus far defied medicine’s best efforts at early diagnosis and curative treatment.

Although pancreatic cancer is a relatively rare cancer, it is so deadly it is now on track to become the country’s second leading cause of cancer-related deaths by 2040. Currently it accounts for about 3 percent of all cancers and 7 percent of cancer deaths. Overall, only one person in 10 diagnosed with pancreatic cancer survives five years. A cure is almost always a lucky accident, when the cancer is detected at an early, symptom-free stage during an unrelated abdominal scan or surgery and the tumor can be surgically removed.”

The article goes on to talk about a project that Sky Foundation has funded ($100,000) to the beginning of PanCAN’s project mentioned in this article:

“Another effort begun last summer by the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, called the Early Detection Initiative for Pancreatic Cancer, will enroll more than 12,000 participants with elevated blood sugar levels and new-onset diabetes. Half will have periodic blood tests and undergo abdominal imaging based on their age, body weight and blood glucose levels to look for evidence of early pancreatic cancer, while the others will serve as controls.

The goal of such studies is to identify biological markers, like certain genes or proteins excreted by the tumor, that could be used in screening tests to indicate the presence of cancer when it could still potentially benefit from surgery. Alas, the results are not likely to be known before 2030, if then.”

Read the full article on the New York Times Website here. 

Sheila Sky Kasselman was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the fall of 2007 after about 9 months of  experiencing the following symptoms: weight loss, nausea, fatigue, diabetes and jaundice. 

“When I was diagnosed, I didn’t know one person who had the disease. Throughout my diagnosis and treatment I would think, ‘I wish I had someone to talk to other than my doctors.’ But there was no one for me to reach out to.”

After Sheila survived Whipple surgery, she committed all the strength in her body, mind and spirit to finding a way to help others who are unaware they have the cancer until it’s too late. Sky Foundation, Inc. is the result of her passionate commitment.  

“Through education, awareness and research we are able to advance knowledge to those diagnosed with the disease or to those who have lost a loved one. Our goal is to find an early detection method to increase survival rates.”

To date, Sky has raised — and donated – nearly $2.5 million to promising researchers around the country. 

In 2020, 14 years after her first diagnosis her cancer was rediscovered. Sheila is now undergoing chemotherapy. She continues to be just as involved with the same enthusiasm and helps others with the same level of passion, day in and day out. 

Today, Sheila continues her legacy with energy and positive attitude to provide hope and knowledge when people face the challenges of a disease that they never anticipated. 

Join us on Thursday, January 20th to watch Q & A with Sheila K. on Facebook.  

While immunotherapy and other targeted treatments involving monoclonal antibodies have been successful in other cancers, pancreatic cancer has been notoriously tough to target because of a lack of suitable cell surface targets to which the antibodies can bind.

But a new target has been identified, and researchers are hopeful that an investigational drug that homes in on it may be an effective treatment for metastatic pancreatic cancer.

Taking Advantage of a New Target

Claudin proteins regulate paracellular barriers to control the flow of molecules between cells, acting like a glue between cells that holds them together. They are found in healthy intestinal systems, but a certain isoform—CLDN18.2—is highly expressed in cancers of the gastrointestinal tract.

In this form, the glue is weaker, which may contribute to metastasis, since it becomes easier for cancerous cells to detach from the primary tumor and disperse. But it could also help expose antibodies for monoclonal antibodies to bind to.

One such monoclonal antibody, zolbetuximab (IMAB362), has been developed to seek out CLDN18.2 on the surface of tumor cells and bind to it, identifying the cells for immune-mediated destruction.

Continue reading the entire article on Let’s Win’s website here.

Sheila (Founder & 14.5 year survivor of pancreatic cancer)  & Annie (Sky’s Event Director) shared their picture on social media.  With support of many Sky followers & friends, Sky Foundation was recognized by Willie Geist during his show.  This was aired on Sunday TODAY during Pancreatic Cancer Month in November 2021.

Watch the clip below to see the appearance!

S

Thanks to a suggestion by Board Member, Niki Gallaudet Sky was featured in Birmingham, Michigan the weekend before our Annual Celebration aired live virtually.

The sooner most cancers are discovered, the better the odds they can be successfully treated.

Mayo Clinic participated in research on a test that can detect more than 50 cancers, CBS Minnesota reports.

“My dad, he was a healthy guy. He didn’t have any known risk factors for cancer,” Dr. Julia Feygin said. Feygin lost her 40-year-old father to pancreatic cancer when she was 13. Diagnosed at stage three, he lived for nine more months.

To watch the video and continue reading the entire article, please visit https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cancer-blood-test-early-detection/.

November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month and it is the third-deadliest cancer. According to data released by the American Cancer Society, it will be the second deadliest by 2030.

Sky Foundation has dedicated itself to educate the community on the signs and symptoms and award seed-money grants to scientists and clinicians from coast to coast who are pursuing research of great promise in the areas of early detection, prevention, or treatment.

The best way we have found to educate the community is the constant drumbeat of symptom awareness. That drumbeat gets the loudest in November.

The most common symptoms are:

• Sudden weight loss
• Fatigue and weakness
• Back pain
• Blood clots
• Depression
• Stomach pain
• Nausea
• New onset of diabetes
• Jaundice

Not everyone gets all of these symptoms. Having a gastroenterologist on your medical team can help. With this cancer, an early diagnosis is the best chance for a successful outcome.

November can be a resounding success if we use this month to learn more about pancreatic cancer.

Sincerely,

Sheila Sky Kasselman

Founder and Survivor

Sky Foundation

Shannon F. Crone

President and Spousal Survivor

Sky Foundation

Managing Director

EY Detroit

Note: Sky Foundation’s Annual Celebration during Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month is Nov. 21 at 5 p.m. To learn more about the virtual event, visit www.skyfoundationinc.org