The Swifty Foundation’s mission is to raise funds and awareness for pediatric brain cancer research by supporting:
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Tissue Donation
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Research Collaboration
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Medulloblastoma Research
Why Swifty? Why Michael’s Master Plan? Watch…
Michael Gustafson, the founder of the Swifty Foundation, chose to donate his brain and spine to researchers after his death to help find a cure for pediatric brain cancer.
Post-mortem tissue donation has become one of three major priorities for Swifty. After Michael donated, researchers told us repeatedly about the dire need for donated tissue to study. Even when funding for research is available, without tissue, the hands of medical researchers are tied. Lack of tissue remains a huge obstacle to finding better treatments. Swifty has been working to remove that barrier by starting Gift from a Child (GFAC) a national post-mortem tissue donation program.
Secondly, we are working to facilitate collaboration in the field of childhood cancer research: collaboration among foundations funding cancer research, research institutions, and between researchers. Historically, research has been funded using a competition model. That funding model must change to accelerate finding cures. Collaboration is why GFAC is now a program of the Children’s Brain Tumor Network (CBTN). CBTN shares tissue and data with researchers around the world without embargo.
Our third priority is recurrent medulloblastoma. This is the disease Michael succumbed to and has a dismal, unacceptable 5 percent survival rate upon recurrence.