When Emmanuelle Gattuso had a suspicious mammogram result 10 years ago, she didnt think it would amount to anything. Her mother had just died of ovarian cancer and her sister had fought off breast cancer two years earlier enough heartache for one family, she figured.
After her doctor at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto told her she did, in fact, have breast cancer, she was completely stunned, she recalled.
Now, Ms. Gattuso, 65, is cancer-free and determined to help push the frontiers of medicine to help others.
Ms. Gattuso and her husband, broadcast mogul Allan Slaight, are donating $50-million to Princess Margaret, in what is being billed as the largest private gift for cancer research in Canadian history.
The money, which was announced on Monday, will support efforts to deliver personalized medicine, a burgeoning field in which doctors use patients genetic information to diagnose disease and deliver customized treatments.
Today, the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre takes a significant step towards conquering cancer in our lifetime, said Paul Alofs, president and CEO of the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation.
The donation, which will be spread over 10 years, will be used to hire more cancer specialists and support their research.
Benjamin Neel has a vision: Within five years, physicians at Princess Margaret Hospital will study all patients cancer cells and provide complete molecular descriptions of their tumours.
By knowing exactly how patients cells are mutating, oncologists can make more precise diagnoses and customize treatments better and ultimately improve survival rates.
The microscope of the future is a DNA sequencer, and we will be analyzing their genomes in a very detailed way, said Dr. Neel, the hospitals research director.
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Philanthropist gives Princess Margaret hospital $50-million to fight cancer