How Rally Foundation Helped Dr. Damon Reed Help Kids with Cancer

Damon Reed, M.D., is a doctor at Memorial Sloan Kettering who works hard to find better ways to help kids and teens with cancer. He received research money from Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research in 2009 and 2011. 

This money helped him try new ideas, like mixing different medicines to see if they work better together. One of the big things he tested was using a mix of two cancer-fighting drugs for kids whose tumors came back. The study helped doctors figure out how to safely use both drugs together.  

He also used Rally Foundation’s support to quickly test new drug combos for a type of cancer called sarcoma. This helped doctors decide which treatments should be tested on real patients next. 

Another project looked at using a diabetes medicine, metformin, to help kids with leukemia, a kind of blood cancer. It showed that the medicine was safe to use with regular treatment and gave scientists a new idea for future cancer research. 

Thanks to Rally, Dr. Reed has been able to help more kids and teach other scientists, too. He now leads big research groups and helps come up with new studies to fight childhood cancer. 

This is why early-stage research funding matters.

This is the power of philanthropic seed investing.

This is Rally.