ESUN

A Look Back at 2011 Results in a Trail of Thanks

By Bruce Shriver, PhD
Editor-in-Chief, ESUN

ESUN is an ongoing project of the Liddy Shriver Sarcoma Initiative. As an organization, we focus on increasing public awareness of sarcoma, raising money to award sarcoma research grants, and providing support and timely information to sarcoma patients, their families, & medical professionals.

As 2011 comes to a close, I’d like to share with you some of what we accomplished this year. We have:

• Completed our eighth year of publishing ESUN, a peer-reviewed newsletter that has received considerable praise within the sarcoma community
• Continued our translation project, which now includes over 25 articles in 5 different languages and increases worldwide access to essential information about sarcomas
• Awarded six research grants, totaling $340,000, and helped fund the Second International Conference on Sarcoma Biology
• Published a portable guide for the newly diagnosed and guides to 18 types of sarcoma
• Worked with families around the world to host Team Sarcoma events and raised more than $600,000 for sarcoma research
• Increased the number of photos in the Faces of Sarcoma project to over 600, representing over 30 countries and 30 different subtypes of sarcoma
• Created a new Tributes section on our website honoring those affected by sarcoma
• Increased our Team Sarcoma presence on Facebook to over 4,000 members and joined in supportive discussions among them
• Continued to enhance the usefulness of our website, SarcomaHelp.org, which is now visited over 40,000 times each month
• Attended meetings in Norway and Chicago, talking with sarcoma specialists about research and patient-care issues

None of these projects could have been done without hundreds of physicians, patients, caregivers and survivors giving freely of their time to help us. This assistance has come from people all over the world supporting our mantra, "Sarcoma Knows No Borders." They believe in our cause, the quality of our work, and our passion. We are deeply indebted to everyone who has helped us reach the above milestones. We give you our sincere thanks.

We press on in our mission for many reasons. We know that sarcomas are often diagnosed in young people who face potential onerous, long-term complications. We know that progress in research is frustratingly slow, and that many who are dealing with sarcoma today have limited treatment options. We know that federal funding to support research in sarcoma is woefully inadequate, and we need to support sarcoma research until this changes. And we know that working together, we can make a difference.