Students Supporting Brain Tumor Research (SSBTR) will sponsor its 9th annual Phoenix Walk-a-thon Feb. 27, 2010 at ASU's Memorial Union to raise funds for brain tumor research.
SSBTR is a student-run organization founded in 2001. Each year, students in Arizona plan the annual walk-a-thon and donate the money raised to support research at various institutions, including Barrow. The group raised $215,000 during last year’s event and reached a fundraising milestone of $1 million since beginning the walk-a-thon. Barrow Neurological Foundation is one of the major beneficiaries of this fundraising event and received $55,500 from last year’s walk-a-thon. Since 2004, Barrow has received more than $225,000 from SSBTR. Barrow uses 100 percent of the money donated from SSBTR for bench (laboratory) research and translational (spanning the lab to the clinic) research, all designed to determine both the cause of and a cure for brain tumors.
This work is done in the Neuro-Oncology Research Laboratory at Barrow's Ina Levine Brain Tumor Center where the goal is to understand the underlying genetic mechanisms that enable some brain tumors to survive cancer therapy. This laboratory is defining the genes responsible for resistance to currently available therapies, including chemotherapy and radiation.
