After about four years of fighting a non-Hodgkin lymphoma that didn't respond definitively to any of the treatments that existed until then, at the end of 1997 I was informed that medicine had nothing left to do for me. In other words, the end of the earthly road had come.

A few weeks later, while trying to find some shortcut to continue on the road, I learned that the FDA (the North American agency that controls food and drugs) had approved the experimental human use of a new medication designed for exactly that type of lymphoma. As a biologist passionate about life and as a patient who didn't want to die, I decided to “run after” that last possibility. Almost two decades after being cured, I continue to thank God, the doctors, the researchers, the laboratory test subjects, the lawyers, and also the people and companies that financed the research that resulted in that medication.

I have watched with concern the frightening advance of cancer worldwide, especially in developing countries. In these countries, the challenges are even greater due to the regional specificity of some types of cancer, the scarcity of resources for prevention and early diagnosis, and the lack of a culture of financial support for clinical research, despite the tax benefits provided for all donors - individuals and legal entities.

The Cura Project is an encouragement in this scenario, as it aims precisely to raise resources to support research into new drugs to combat cancer in Brazil. Here we have strict rules for the approval of research by local ethics committees, which are part of a national regulatory network that protects the safety and well-being of each research participant.

The benefits derived from clinical research do not only reach patients who are cured and resume their normal course of life. They also add value to the institutions and professionals involved in their various stages, opening new frontiers of scientific knowledge that will underpin new scientific advances.

Life is priceless. Please help the Cure Project heal lives!

Cristina Santedicola
Biologist, Master in Geology

Salvador Sep 13, 2016

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