The Stefanie Spielman Patient Assistance Fund assists breast cancer patients and their families who are struggling to afford the costs associated with treatment. The fund has provided essential equipment and services, including circulation pumps for lymphedema, compression garments, wigs, nutrition supplements, gas cards, Wendy’s gift cards and assistance with transportation.
The Stefanie Spielman Fund for Breast Cancer Research is devoted to advancing research in breast cancer. Currently, the fund is focused on supporting several areas:
- The Spielman Fund will support the Stefanie Spielman Endowed Professorship in Breast Cancer Research at Ohio State’s Comprehensive Cancer Center. The researcher in this position will focus on translating discoveries made in the laboratory into treatments for breast cancer patients.
- The fund is supporting researchers in OSU School of Pharmacy and the Comprehensive Cancer Center who are discovering, developing and testing new drugs for breast cancer in clinical trials.
- The fund will create an award for supporting new ideas and new investigators in breast cancer. Researchers will submit proposals and the funds will be awarded after review by a committee comprised of researchers and a patient advocate.
- The fund supports two efforts that provide an invaluable resource to support breast cancer research – a large collection of breast cancers and the treatments and outcomes of the patients with these breast cancers – the Spielman Breast Cancer Tissue Archive Services and the Spielman Breast Cancer Tumor Bank. The tissue archive services, under the leadership of Charles Shapiro, MD, director of Breast Cancer Medical Oncology, and Sanford Barsky, MD, director of Pathology at Ohio State’s Medical Center and The James, uses breast cancers already collected and stored in the OSU Department of Pathology. The tumor bank collects breast cancers and blood samples from newly diagnosed patients. The tissue archive services and the tumor bank allows for promising gene or protein discoveries in the laboratory to be quickly tested on human breast cancers that come from patients.