Doctors Awarded Grants To Fight Cancer In Memory Of Emily Beazley

CHICAGO, IL - Four university researchers will receive grants from the St. Baldrick's Foundation in memory of Emily Beazley, the beloved Mount Greenwood neighborhood girl who died at age 12 in 2015 after a four-year fight with Stage III T-Cell lymphoblastic non-Hodgkin's lymphona. The grants will help make possible what Beazley had long wished: for no other child to go through what she did in her courageous and difficult fight with cancer.

Before Beazley died, she provided the inspiration to set up the "Kures for Kids" foundation and earlier this year it was named a "Hero Fund" within the St. Baldrick's Foundation. All the money raised in Beazley's memory went to the foundation's goal of fighting childhood cancer.

“Up until the end, she still had a smile on her face and a positive attitude," Ed and Nadia Beazley, Emily's parents, said in a statement. "We continue Emily’s work in hopes that one day there will be no such thing as childhood cancer.”

Just recently, St. Baldrick's announced the recipients of the grants from the $510,000 that has been put into the Hero Fund to date.

Dr. Ryan Summers of Emory University in Atlanta will use $169,550 to support his work focused on finding new treatments with fewer toxic side-effects for children with early T-precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Dr. Birgit Knoechel from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston will use $75,000 to support her research on drug resistance T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia and developing new treatment strategies for patients with relapsed leukemia.

Dr. Rani George from Dana-Farber will use $100,000 to support his research focused on understanding how a gene that is abnormal in over half of patients with high-risk neuroblastoma can cause tumor growth by shutting off protective immune mechanisms.

Dr. Jing Fang from the University of South Carolina will use $100,000 to support her research focused on helping kids with leukemia, which suggests that by lowering the protein levels or limiting its function may help cure leukemia without injuring normal blood cells.

"When I would do the head shave (fundraiser) for St. Baldrick's, I always knew the money would be going to good use," Ed Beazley, Emily's father, said. "And now that we have partnered with them, it is cool to see exactly where the money is going and how it will be used."

The use of these grants ensures that one of Beazley's two goals in life will be fulfilled. In addition to establishing a foundation that supports childhood cancer research, she also had dreams of becoming a pediatric oncology nurse.

Photo courtesy of the Beazley family