About Us

The 12th Annual “Hoops for a Cure” will take place at the Chartiers Valley High School on Friday, March 30, 2007 beginning at 5:30 p.m. Proceeds from the event will benefit the Nathan S. Arenson Fund for Pancreatic Cancer Research. Dr. Olivera Finn, Professor and Chair at the University of Pittsburgh School Of Medicine, oversees the Nathan S. Arenson Fund.

We are planning another exciting event this year, which will commence with teams of 11 & 12th graders from the Chartiers Valley High School. The second event of the evening will be the Section 4 All-Stars vs. the WPIAL All-Stars. This game will showcase top All-Star talent from all over the WPIAL. The final game begins at 8:00 p.m. when the Chartiers Valley Alumni and Special Guests take on the Pittsburgh Steelers. Admission is $5.00; children under three will be admitted free of charge.

The pancreatic cancer vaccine clinical trials that Dr. Finn and her team have performed over the last 10 years with the support of the Arenson Fund have focused on inducing immune responses in pancreatic cancer patients. This approach is known as therapeutic vaccination. In general, while they have stimulated the immune system to hold off cancer recurrence, the effect was only short term, similar to what would happen if viral vaccines were to be administered after viral infection. The important thing is that the safety of their vaccine was confirmed in these therapeutic trials and this has now paved the way to cancer prevention trials. Dr. Finn will continue therapeutic vaccines in selected pancreatic cancer patients even though they result in short-term benefits rather than complete cure. The vaccine is the only non-toxic therapy that maintains good quality of life. At the same time, Dr. Finn is working on getting the permission from the FDA to initiate trials in pancreatic cancer prevention in high-risk individuals. Cancer prevention trials will need to enroll a large number of individuals and monitor their health for an extended period of time.

In these hard times of budget deficits where the government support for cancer research has been reduced and funds are being committed only one year at a time, these long-range projects could not be undertaken without dedicated support from you.

With the resources of the Nathan S. Arenson Lab, the help from the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and by securing additional funds from NCI, we are making progress in our research with the intention to find the method of early detection, diagnosis and eventually the ultimate prevention and cure of this devastating disease.

The Arenson Fund is a dynamic financial resource that allows our scientists the flexibility to embark on the most innovative investigations as soon as ideas are generated and experiments possible, without the long wait that is otherwise associated with obtaining funding for specific projects. Because they are able to obtain preliminary results in a timely fashion, they’ve been able to use these results to successfully compete for additional funding by the National Cancer Institute and in that way leverage the Arenson Fund.

I am once again asking for your assistance to further support Dr. Olivera J. Finn and her team at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, who administer the funds from The Nathan S. Arenson Fund, in their quest to find a cure for Pancreatic Cancer.

Raffle tickets are now being sold for $10.00 each. The Grand Prize of (2) tickets to Super Bowl 42 in Glendale, Arizona, along with tickets to several other major sporting events, not to mention several pieces of authentic autographed sports memorabilia are included in this exciting raffle. Door prizes will be given away during the evening to several lucky patrons who have a winning admission ticket. Four lucky patrons will have a chance at a half-court shot to win $10,000.00

The Nathan S. Arenson Fund depends on all of us in order to survive. I hope you will support this worthy cause because in the end, it is your generosity that will truly help in our fight to combat this deadly disease that affects us all. It is my continued hope that this fund and this event become renowned for medical research and treatment in the fight against Pancreatic Cancer. To date, the Nathan S. Arenson Fund has raised in excess of $900,000.00. Our goal this year in our fundraising efforts is to raise $100,000.