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What is the Catherine Peachey Fund?

The Mission, History, and Constituency of the Catherine Peachey Fund

The Catherine Peachey Fund began thirteen years ago. As Cathy Peachey was losing her battle with breast cancer, she asked members of the Indiana Breast Cancer Coalition to continue her fight. The mission of the Catherine Peachey Fund is to promote advances in breast cancer research and treatment. We provide financial support to research and programs that we believe are best positioned to move from the bench to the clinic.

The CPF has directed over three million dollars to programs and research that are impacting the time line to a cure. This focus on breast cancer treatment and research has been a unique partnership between the consumer and the leadership of the IU Simon Cancer Center.

The goal of the CPR is to impact the time line to a cure by identifying and funding research and programs that will progress from the bench to the clinic in early detection, prevention and treatment of breast cancer.

  • We host an annual meeting of scientists, consumers and clinicians from Indiana, The Amelia Project-Giving Wings to Research. Dr. George Sledge Chairs this meeting, with Program Chair, Donna Ullm Babbs, a Peachey Trustee. The meeting has grown to over 120 participants and has fostered cross--institutional collaborations from across Indiana for the past 13 years.
  • We created The Catherine Peachey Breast Cancer Prevention Program, under the direction of Dr. Anna Maria Storniolo.The Catherine Peachey Fund created a million dollar endowment to establish this program where women could find targeted information and treatment for addressing their risk of breast cancer. The creation of Mary Ellen's Tissue Bank and the Friends for Life program originated from this Prevention Program.
  • The concept for what has gone from Mary Ellen's Tissue Bank to the Susan G Komen for the Cure Tissue Bank at the IU Simon Cancer Center was born at our Amelia Project. Scientists reported not being able to complete funded research because they did not have access to  normal  breast tissue samples. Dr. Worta McCaskill-Stevens from the National Cancer Institute informed the group that these samples were rare, and they would not be forthcoming. As the co-chair for the Amelia Project, Connie Rufenbarger recognized a consumer opportunity. It took three years to develop a tissue bank that met regulatory standards. In 2005 Friends for Life tissue collection event took place at the IU Simon Cancer Center. Within six hours over 800 volunteers donated a sample of blood and completed a four-page questionnaire. The CPF funded this event with ten thousand dollars. The number of samples now exceeds 2,200 and is being used to study genomics, proteomics and for epidemiology studies.

The Catherine Peachey Fund is a combination of two powerful entities; trustees who are motivated by their close personal experiences with breast cancer and hundreds of volunteers who over the years have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for breast cancer. Volunteers undertake each project for raising funds. Projects include: Just Peachey-Cooking Up a Cure, A Notable Night, A Day at the Lake, Wine, Women and Song, Quilting Up a Cure, and the Bracelet Project with the Bracelet Ladies and the Broadripple Key Club. Each event has been financially successful.

These large tissue banks with serum, plasma, breast tissue and other potential tissues, when married to detailed donor annotation, have the potential to change the time line to a cure. Our greatest desire is to make this opportunity available to consumers and researchers across the country. The CPF is not an organization of wealthy, powerful individuals or corporations. We are grassroots activists. Our projects have been presented at national breast cancer meetings as models for others to follow. The Amelia Project was chosen for a Poster Presentation at the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program, and most recently, Friends for Life was chosen for a Poster Presentation at the San Antonio Breast Meeting and the National Oncology Nurses Association meeting. The CPF hopes that other consumer organizations will recognize their ability to facilitate regional research meetings as well as become the driving force behind the new paradigm for tissue collection.