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. Over the past few years, the fund has supported researchers and their efforts. Currently, the fund is focused on supporting the following areas:
- In collaboration with The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute, the Stefanie Spielman Endowed Professorship in Breast Cancer Research has recruited a nationally known scientist whose research focuses on translating laboratory discoveries into effective treatments for breast cancer patients.
- Researchers in OSU School of Pharmacy and the Comprehensive Cancer Center are developing new drugs for breast cancer. The fund will support continued efforts to discover and test these new drugs in clinical trials.
- The Spielman 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 that includes researchers and a patient advocate.
- An invaluable resource to support breast cancer research is a large collection of breast cancers characterized by all the relevant pathological features of the cancers and the treatments and outcomes of the patients with these breast cancers. The fund is supporting two such efforts, the Spielman Breast Cancer Tissue Archive Services and Spielman Breast Cancer Tumor Bank. The Tissue Archive Services, under the leadership of Charles Shapiro MD, the Director of Breast Cancer Medical Oncology, uses breast cancers already collected and stored by Ohio State’s 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 genes or proteins that first are discovered in the laboratory using cell lines or animal models to be quickly tested for their importance and relevance to human breast cancers that come from patients. Examples of ongoing research conducted using these resources include: the molecular factors associated with basaloid, or estrogen receptor negative, progesterone receptor negative, and HER-2 negative (or “triple negative”) breast cancers, and the molecular factors associated with tamoxifen resistance.