Dr. Barbara Bedogni, Jerry Yass, Beverly Berkowitz (Pap Corps VP) and Linda Moses (Pap Corps President)
To recognize Melanoma Awareness Month, The Pap Corps recently announced that they raised $513,000 for melanoma research during their 2018 Dr. Kevin Berkowitz Memorial End of Year Giving Campaign. These funds will be directed toward groundbreaking melanoma research at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. This end of year giving challenge was augmented by the generous $100,000 matching gift provided by The Yass Family.
“Melanoma is the deadliest of skin cancers. In fact, over 125,000 Americans will be diagnosed with melanoma this year—roughly one person every six minutes, and incidence of the disease continues to rise,” said The Pap Corps CEO David Bakelman. “Melanoma can also occur in the eyes and metastasize to other organs. Our donation to Sylvester is being earmarked for advanced types of research, and we are very proud to help support the doctors in these efforts.”
Gerald Yass had established the Yass Discovery Fund for Collaborative Research at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center to focus on melanoma, the deadly skin cancer, in memory of his late wife. The funds raised from The Pap Corps’ end of year giving campaign will enhance the programs that are currently underway.
Beverly Berkowitz (Pap Corps VP), Jerry Yass, Helen Mofitch, Linda Moses (Pap Corps President)
Dr. William Harbour’s translational ocular oncology laboratory has been involved in a team effort to perform a comprehensive examination of BAP1, a complex and poorly understood tumor suppressor. The collaborative studies of uveal melanoma have led to the discovery of a new biomarker that may have implications for precision medicine.
Since joining Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center in 2017 through a generous donation from the Yass Strategic Recruitment Fund, Dr. Barbara Bedogni’s laboratory has been working on a novel mechanism by which melanomas become resistant to BRAF directed therapies and is also involved in resistance to radiation therapy of brain metastases. BRAF is a gene that makes a protein called B-RAF, which is involved in sending signals in cells and in cell growth. Goals of Dr. Bedogni’s laboratory are to provide new points of therapeutic intervention that can benefit long-term melanoma patients.
“Each year, we earmark our end of year giving for a selected cancer,” said The Pap Corps President Linda Moses. “We are confident that The Pap Corps’ efforts, paired with the Yass family’s generosity, will help make exciting new discoveries and create better treatments for melanoma.”
About The Pap Corps:
Since its founding in 1952, The Pap Corps has donated more than $110 million to Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, including a historic $50 million pledge in 2016 dedicating The Pap Corps Campus at Sylvester in Deerfield Beach. The Pap Corps derives its name from Dr. George Papanicolaou, a pioneer in cytopathology and early cancer detection, who introduced the world to the revolutionary ‘Pap’ test. A small group of women began the organization to support his efforts, and over the decades it has grown into an organization of over 20,000 men and women, in over 50 chapters, who raise funds to support all types of cancers.
For more information about the organization’s history, fundraising initiatives and volunteer opportunities, please visit www.thepapcorps.org
