Leslie LaChance's ROS1 Lung Cancer Research Fundraising Page

Thank you for visiting my lung cancer research fundraising page. I am living with stage IV metastatic lung cancer, which is currently an incurable disease. Anyone can get lung cancer, even never-smokers or non-smokers like me.

I am asking for your help to eradicate this disease by donating to the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation. Funds donated to this page will go directly to support research into a rare genetic rearrangement called ROS1, which is driving my particular form of lung cancer. Some treatment is already available for ROS1 cancer in the form of daily oral chemotherapy, and I have benefited from it. However, ROS1 is a clever cancer, and it mutates in response to therapy, necessitating new approaches to treatment. In fact, I am on my second line of treatment and am counting on this research to create new and better treatment options and to find a cure.

Your donation will help researchers develop new treatments from cell lines (called patient-derived xenografts or PDX) donated by ROS1 patients. By collaborating with researchers in this PDX study , ROS1 patients are helping to find new treatments and, we hope, a cure. It's empowering to know the ROS1 community is playing such an important part in research of our disease. The research findings from this project will be non-proprietary, which means anyone can use what we learn from the study to create new medicines to treat and cure cancer.

My current goal is to raise $5000 by my 56th birthday on March 20, 2019, and I'd love to raise at least half of that during Lung Cancer Awareness Month, aka November 2018. Thank you for your support.