More than 3,000 people congregated in Madison’s Warner Park Saturday for a five to 10 K Run-Walk, raising more than $200,000 for the American Cancer Society.
ACS raises and donates millions every year toward cancer-patient programs, education programs and cancer-research programs.
ACS’s fiscal data for last year is not yet available, but the organization donated a total of $770 million to cancer prevention, education and research programs.
ACS channels 60 percent of the funds raised in a given area toward cancer programs and research in the area where the money is raised.
University of Wisconsin professor James Stewart of the UW Comprehensive Cancer Center said the UW cancer center is partially funded by the ACS.
He said the UW cancer center allows cancer patients to have greater access to new treatments through participation in UW research. He said cancer research and treatment are “very much intertwined.”
“We are just in the middle of starting to see lab work from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s catch up, and the molecular understanding of the cancer cell is becoming more apparent,” Stewart said. “There is a whole different kind of chemo that we’ll be seeing.”
The UW Comprehensive Cancer Center employs more than 2,300 people, including more than 200 doctors and physicians.
“It is one of the bigger cancer centers in the United States,” Stewart said.
He said most of the progress in cancer research has been made in prevention and treatment.
“Many cancer diseases are much more controllable today, if not curable,” Stewart said. “We’re just starting to learn how to prevent cancer better.”
The center’s Breast Center received an award as a Center of Excellence for stereotactic breast biopsy by Ethicon-Endosurgery. Ethicon-Endosurgery produced the Mammotome biopsy needle, used to make minute incisions for biopsies in diagnosing cancer. The UW Breast Center, just opened in October of 2002, is one of two designated centers of excellence in Wisconsin out of 100 throughout the United States.
In February, UW’s Cancer Center announced that UW urologist David Jarrard helped develop a way for men who became sexually impotent after prostate surgery to regain their sexual performance.
Five of Jarrard’s nine patients who underwent the new technique have regained their ability to have either unassisted or partial erections.
“The men we have operated on are very pleased,” Jarrard said in a Feburary statement. “In the past, you would typically take the prostate and both nerves and say ‘You’re going to be impotent,’ and that’s it. For men who are in their 40s, 50s, or 60s, it makes a big difference not having to say that anymore.”
The American Cancer Society throws hundreds of fundraisers across the United States. “Relay for Life,” an overnight ACS event where participant team members take turns walking or running on a track all night, will take place in Madison April 25.
