The Daily Tell

The Lustgarten Foundation recently announced it has awarded $1.6 million in grant money to institutions that research pancreatic cancer.

The grants represent the foundation’s initial awards for 2009, with six research centers. In all, the foundation expects to award $4 million in grant money this year, which is twice that of last year’s amount.

Cablevision Systems Corp is underwriting Lustgarten’s administrative expenses. As a result, all money donated to the foundation goes to pancreatic cancer research. In 1999, Marc Lustgarten, a former vice chairman for Cablevision and president of Madison Square Garden, died because of pancreatic cancer.

Kerri Kaplan, executive director of The Lustgarten Foundation, said that many of the grants will go to institutions that have been building off the work of The Genome Project, which decoded the genetic blueprint of pancreatic cancer. Other research projects dealing with pancreatic cancer also will benefit from the money.

“If successful, this research will move us another step closer toward the goal of making pancreatic cancer detection as easy as a routine blood test, and provide the framework for developing life-saving treatments,” Kaplan said.

The six research centers that will receive the initial round of grant money include: The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; John Hopkins University; The Ohio State University; the University of Michigan Medical School; and the University of California, San Francisco.

Every year more than 37,000 people are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and 34,000 people die from it annually. Like most cancers, early detection is one of the most important factors for a person’s ability to survive.

For those diagnosed with the disease, 5 percent survive five years. Those with the most advanced type of the cancer die in under a year. In all, pancreatic cancer is the fourth-highest cause of cancer deaths in the United States.