Umpqua Bank award honors young researcher

Thomas Russell, MD, a second-year fellow in pediatric hematology/oncology, is the 2011 recipient of the Umpqua Bank Innovation Award for Pediatric Cancer Research.

(L to R) Ray Davis, Umpqua Bank President & CEO, Charles Keller, MD, Thomas Russell, MD, Kelly Johnson, Umpqua Bank Executive Vice President

In 2010, Umpqua Bank pledged $100,000 to make one $10,000 award each year for the next 10 years to promising cancer researchers at the Knight and Doernbecher who are in the early stages of their career. To be eligible to apply, faculty members must be within five years of their first faculty appointment or senior-level trainees (senior post-doctoral fellows without faculty rank of assistant professor). The purpose of this award is to cultivate outstanding cancer research by assisting in the generation of preliminary data for peer-reviewed national funding, career development proposals, or similar. Each summer, leadership at the Knight and at Doernbecher selects the award recipient.

Dr. Russell works with Peter Kurre, MD, an affiliate investigator of  the Pediatric Cancer Biology Program.

Dr. Keller, leader of the Pediatric Cancer Biology Program, and Dr. Russel, along with Knight director Dr. Brian Druker, met Umpqua Bank President & CEO Ray Davis and bank Executive Vice President Kelly Johnson this week, and explained some of their research into pediatric cancer. Dr. Russell expressed his deep gratitude for Umpqua Bank’s gift:

You’re not just helping me learn to be a good scientist and further the goal of OHSU, you’re helping foster an understanding of cancer and cancer biology in a way that will help us help children face cancer in a way that they are not able to do now.

Drs. Keller and Russell hosted a tour of the Pediatric Cancer Biology Laboratories in the biomedical research building, and showed the team from Umpqua Bank some of the tests that are currently under way.

   

reposted from:  KnightNews Blog. 

Kyla McCullough Gift Fund furthering Research, every day

We extend our heartfelt thanks to the Kyla McCullough Gift Fund who have made a generous gift of a vital instrument to Pediatric Cancer Biology Program laboratories.  This NanoDrop Spectrophotometer (pictured in the left bottom corner) is a special type of instrument uses sparingly small amounts of our experimental samples to measure the concentration of DNA and RNA that the samples contain.  This spectrophotometer will be used by multiple laboratories very often - approximately 7–10 researchers each day. A placard on the instrument reads:
 

Kyla McCullough Gift Fund

Know You’re Loved Always

Kyla was diagnosed with a brain tumor in First Grade and she touched many lives.  Her memory, kindness and strength of spirit live on in the selfless advocacy for new treatments of childhood cancers - the mission of her her parents and the board of the Kyla McCullough Gift Fund.