Ward Rounds

In tough economic times, grant money for research—whether from the government or private foundations—gets that much harder to find. And money to fund basic scientific research is never easy to come by, even in the best of times.

But that’s been much less of a concern for the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University thanks to the efforts of a group of friends and business associates inspired by the people they lost to cancer.

For the past decade, the H Foundation, an all-volunteer group founded by businesspeople in and near west suburban LaGrange, Ill., has grossed more than $4 million, of which $3.5 million has provided seed money for the Lurie Cancer Center, which in turn has leveraged about $30 million in a wide variety of grants – all for basic research.

They’ve had fun doing it, too: The vast majority of the money has come from a Caribbean-themed annual fund raiser called the Goombay Bash, named after a tropical drink called the Goombay Smash, held in recent years at Navy Pier.

“It’s a remarkable group of young professionals who have dedicated themselves to advancing cancer research and making an important impact,” says Steven Rosen, MD, director of the Lurie Cancer Center and Genevieve E. Teuton Professor of Medicine at the Feinberg School of Medicine. “They have genuine concern and empathy for the problems cancer patients face. They understand the importance of fundamental research and how that leads to the advances in cancer therapy – and the cures of tomorrow.”

The Goombay Bash, held in recent years at Navy Pier, is a Caribbean-themed annual fundraiser organized by the H Foundation to raise money for cancer research.

How it started

The co-founders of the H Foundation began their battle against cancer after losing two friends and associates at Hortons Home Lighting in downtown LaGrange, an outside sales representative named Pam Herts, age 31 with a 1-year-old son; and Don Winkel, a hardware manager, says John Rot, president of the foundation and owner of the lighting store.

“Like most retailers, we have a small, family atmosphere, and everyone just wanted to do something,” Rot says. “We met with friends who are local business owners and said we wanted to do a fundraiser and it started from there.”

The group did not intend to continue the effort and incorporate into a foundation, but after their first event raised nearly $100,000, they thought they might be onto something, according to Rot. After meeting with several medical facilities in the Chicago area, they chose Northwestern’s Lurie Cancer Center because they were inspired by its focus on basic research.

“So many people want to donate more near the end of a research project,” he explains. “Our group is not like that. It’s not about building a brand of our own.”

Cause engages all ages

The H Foundation has stayed mostly intact since the beginning, with many of the same board members, but it’s definitely grown over the years and now includes an affiliated group for elementary through high school students called Cancer Smashers.

“It’s really neat to see whole families now being involved,” Rot says. “It’s truly a group of people who have been touched by this disease. … It motivates us to keep going. They put their heart into it. They put their personal time into it.”

Cancer Smashers, comprised of 10- to 20-year-olds, helped prepare for last summer’s Goombay Bash and has continued with fundraisers at students’ schools and other efforts, says Beth Tischler, co-director of the youth group.

“They all became friends. They wanted to stay in contact,” she says. “It’s basically the same kids who have helped year after year, doing all this work with the H Foundation, preparing auction items, stuffing envelopes, that type of thing.” Many have lost or nearly lost someone close to them to cancer – parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, family friends.

“Everybody in the group has somebody in mind, and that’s why they’re here,” Tischler explains.

The members of the H Foundation Board have all known someone close to them who has battled cancer. It is for this reason that they work to organize fundraising events like the Goombay Bash.

Broad impact

Hundreds of researchers have benefited from seed money from the H Foundation, and thousands at Northwestern and elsewhere have been impacted through the leveraged dollars, says Thomas O’Halloran, PhD, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry and associate director of the Basic Sciences Research Division at the Lurie Cancer Center, who decides where the seed dollars are directed. The money also has helped to establish state-of-the-art facilities for areas like proteomics and whole animal imaging, he says.

“We’ve built a series of incentive grants and use the money to help new teams of scientists collaborate on basic research,” O’Halloran says. “They’re learning powerful ways to understand the cancer cell, and its sensitivities and its aggressive characteristics. We pick projects to fund very carefully.”

The seed money often helps researchers gather the data they need to make a presentation for considerably larger amounts of support to agencies like the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes for Health, according to Jenna Ter Molen, program assistant in O’Halloran’s office.

“Particularly in tight financial times, there often isn’t the money to do the preliminary research,” she explains. “We say, ‘We want to do this.’ Funders say, ‘Prove it first.’ For many investigators, that H Foundation funding is critical to get the data they need for a grant.”

“These government agencies typically want to fund work that is de-risked, that there is very little chance of failing,” O’Halloran says. “That’s why the vision of the H Foundation is so critical. … Most other foundations are only interested in the short-term; they want to fund clinical research, which is great, that work needs to be funded as well. But there aren’t that many foundations dedicated to basic research.”

Among those whose work has benefited is Debu Chakravarti, PhD, a professor who leads the Hormone Action & Signal Transduction Program at the Lurie Cancer Center. His program had submitted a proposal to the National Cancer Institute to further explore the properties of a new protein called TAP 11 that appears to regulate colon cancer cell function. Although the proposal received a high score from NIH, it initially was not funded.

That might have led to a dead-end in the research process, save for a $20,000 “bridge award” from the H Foundation pot — designed to tide a researcher over until the next round of potential grants would be awarded —

In May 2011, the H Foundation presented a check for $375,000 to the Lurie Cancer Center.

that enabled Chakravarti’s program to continue its research to provide additional data needed for the application resubmission. The laboratory ultimately received $1.25 million for five years in direct cost for colon cancer research in a subsequent proposal to NIH.

“The H Foundation money came in just at the right time for us,” he says. “A budding project that did not have funding from other sources needs this kind of funding for successful submissions of grants at the national level. The H Foundation is one of very few foundations that have the vision to support basic cancer research, which is critical for understanding a disease as complex as cancer.”

Associate Professor Carole LaBonne, PhD, has received H Foundation funding for two purposes: to purchase a machine that helps to precisely measure cells’ gene expression and to help her reapply for a National Cancer Institute grant aimed at better understanding and developing therapeutic interventions for neural crest-derived cancers. These include neuroblastomas, one of the most common childhood tumors, as well as melanomas and glioblastomas.

Determining the mechanisms by which stem cell-like neural crest cells develop will help provide an understanding of how diseases like cancer result from the aberrant regulations of these cells, LaBonne says. Her research also investigates how the migratory and invasive behavior of neural crest cells is regulated and, “ultimately, how individual neural crest cells are directed to adopt specific derivative fates,” she says.

The quantitative PCR machine that allows researchers to measure precise levels of gene expression from very small amounts of material has been “invaluable” to discerning the whys and hows of cell behavior, LaBonne says. And the bridge funding she received to continue her research likewise has been “incredibly valuable to keep the project going and collect new data” so that she could reapply to NCI.

“The federal funding environment is absolutely abysmal,” she adds. “We have reached a point where many of the grant applications that have been judged most meritorious by the peer review system are nevertheless going unfunded. Increasingly people are experiencing funding gaps.”

Andrew Mazar, PhD, owes his role as director of the Center for Developmental Therapeutics and entrepreneur-in-residence at the Chemistry of Life Processes Institute, both located on Northwestern’s Evanston campus, to H Foundation funding, which provides support for his center.

In those positions, which he began 18 months ago, Mazar works with researchers throughout the Lurie Cancer Center to develop cancer drugs as quickly as possible so they can be tested in clinical settings. He uses a hockey analogy to explain, “Our objective is to get as many shots on goal as possible.

“Without the H Foundation, hands down, I wouldn’t be able to do that,” he says, given the broad scope of his center’s work. Mazar adds that he wears “too many hats” for any one source of support to cover all of his activities.

“We can work with anybody in the cancer center who has a good idea,” the research professor of molecular biosciences continues. “It’s very transformative. It’s something brand-new that the university didn’t have before. It’s exponentially grown in terms of people interested in collaborating, as word has spread about what we do.”

One element of the Goombay Bash is an auction to raise money for cancer research.

Word has been spreading about the H Foundation’s efforts, too, with more than 1,000 people attending the Goombay Bash this past year, raising $570,000, Rot says. “Our event is fun, it is upbeat,” he says. “It continues to grow because people bring other people — not because we spend money on marketing and advertising. It’s taken on a life of its own. … It’s amazing what normal, everyday people can do if they get involved.”

If you are interested in volunteering for the H Foundation, please contact Amanda Craig in the Office of Development at (312)503-4635 or a-craig@northwestern.edu.