Opening Speech from Saturday's Inspiration Dinner

Hey everyone! I just finished running my first marathon and I'm incredibly grateful to all for your support and encouragement. I'd like to share with you the opening speech from the President of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada. It reminded me of the importance of what I do and gives you the bigger picture of how your money is helping change lives. I took the time to type it up, so I hope you read it! :)

Hello, I am Nancy Allen with Team in Training and President of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada. I would like to say Welcome marathons to your Team in Training Inspiration Dinner in ROME, ITALY!!!

We are here to acknowledge and thank you all for your efforts and to further motivate and inspire you for your event tomorrow as you prepare to celebrate the culmination of your training and fundraising efforts. Let’s start by making a little noise to show we are here – on the count of three let’s get a big GO TEAM from y’all.

LLS has become the leading North American organization in the fight against blood cancers. No longer are leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma considered almost fatal diseases as they once were in 1949.

Through innovative efforts LLS has helped to significantly increase survival rates of these blood cancers, and we remain committed to stay on the forefront in:

Research, Patient Services, Advocacy, and Fundraising: with Team in Training leading the way of our fundraising charge. Team in Training® (TNT) has trained over 440,000 “athletes” and has reached a remarkable milestone of raising over $1 billion to support blood cancer research and patient services. Team in Training continues to be a strong fundraising force with the active support of participants like you – so thank you.

The money you have raised truly inspires the Society. TNT fundraising efforts have had a positive impact on the research and services we fund. Since our inception in 1949, LLS has invested more than $750 million in research aimed at helping all blood cancer patients live longer, healthy lives. We will continue to support research through our innovative and integrated funding programs, until every patient has a safe and effective therapy. In fiscal year 2010, LLS supported research in the U.S., Canada, and 9 other countries with a total budget of approximately $72 million, which almost $6 illion was focused on paediatric cancer research. Research funding was dispersed across all blood cancer categories, including:

• Leukemia research: approximately $36 million
• Lymphoma research: approximately $29 million
• Myeloma research: approximately $7 million

In these committed research funds, LLS has a special research initiative that focuses on the Quality of Life so important to our patients and their families.

The cure rates for many cancers have improved dramatically over the past decades, but the harsh reality is that too many cancer survivors suffer serious side-effects of their curative treatments. Toxic side-effects can occur months or years after the treatments are finished, sometimes as chronic conditions, sometimes life-threatening, but always unacceptably reducing a patient’s quality of life.

While research continues to seek new safe and effective drugs, what patients need now is for current therapies to be made less harmful without sacrificing their effectiveness.

We have invested in this research designed to discover the biological mechanisms that cause late effects, and to develop and test measures to prevent or at least significantly reduce toxicities.

The paediatric cancer story has shown us that the goal is achievable. Years of research and clinical trials enabled survival rates to reach nearly 90% for children with acute lymphocytic leukemia. But then the medical and research community recognized that the serious late effects were impacting quality of life. High-dose radiation treatments, once thought critical to cures, have been eliminated for most children, significantly reducing cognitive deficits and other once common side-effects.

Now LLS has a goal of doing for ALL cancer patients, regardless of age, what has been achieved for many children – survival with good quality of life. Because of you and the money you raise, we remain in the forefront of cancer research and we get one step closer to a cure every day.