Posted on March 28, 2001 at 8:35 a.m.

BIRMINGHAM, AL — The Avon Products Foundation has awarded $2 million to the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center for breast cancer research as part of $16.2 million in funding nationwide. The gift will allow UAB to begin several innovative new breast cancer programs to enhance programs established last year with the Foundation’s initial gift of $2.2 million, according to Cancer Center Director Albert F. LoBuglio, M.D.

Andrea Jung, chief executive officer of Avon Products, Inc., announced the gifts, which were made possible with funds raised by the Avon Breast Cancer Crusade. The gifts go to leading national cancer centers, medical centers and service organizations to fund access to care and research toward finding a cure for breast cancer.

“Avon Products Foundation gifts have energized breast cancer research at UAB, helping to make our Comprehensive Cancer Center one of the nation’s leaders in seeking answers to a health problem that weighs heavily on the minds of all women,” LoBuglio said.

Last year’s gift helped begin research in the areas of targeted radio-immunotherapy, biology of racial differences in survival, diagnosis and therapy in under-served populations, and the significance of specific genes associated with breast cancer.

Projects funded by the new gift include Dr. Katri Selander’s study of how breast cancer grows in bone marrow. Dr. Matthias Kraus will study the function of a family of cancer-associated molecules called ErbB. Dr. Carla Falkson will help take basic science findings into experimental patient treatment.

In addition, Drs. Tandra Chaudhuri and Kurt Zinn will explore ways to non-invasively detect and evaluate therapy of breast cancer using light-based tumor imaging. Dr. David Reynolds’ project will seek better ways to safely deliver therapeutic genes to cancer cells. And a community outreach project led by Drs. Mona Fouad and Edward Partridge will seek to reduce disparity in breast cancer mortality between African-American and Caucasian women.

Selander, Kraus and Falkson are new UAB Cancer Center scientists. They were recruited to UAB as Avon Breast Cancer Scholars with funds set aside from last year’s gift. Kraus, who helped identify the important erb-B2 receptor while at the National Institutes of Health, has been a leading scientist at the European Institute of Oncology at Milan, Italy. Falkson, a South Africa native who specializes in large clinical trials, headed an arm of the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group. Selander previously conducted her research into the spread of breast cancer to bone while at the University of Turku, Finland.

The majority of the $16.2 million funding from Avon Products Foundation this year will go to national cancer centers. In addition to UAB, they are Harvard Comprehensive Cancer Center/Massachusetts General Hospital, Johns Hopkins Oncology Center (Baltimore), University of California at San Francisco Clinical Cancer Center, Northwestern University/Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center (Chicago), and University of California at Irvine Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center.

More information on Avon and its products and programs can be found at www.avon.com. For information on the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center, visit www3.ccc.uab.edu.