We want to share this beautiful mosaic portrait of Anne Feeley. It captures her amazing spirit and it makes us smile. Anne was a champion in the fight against brain cancer. After a long battle with the disease, she passed away in October of this year.
Anne had many passions - one of them was a love of reading. She founded the My Very Own Library literacy (MVOL) initiative for young people in her home state of New Jersey. The mosaic portrait was created by students at the Abington Avenue School in Newark, New Jersey - one of the participating schools in the MVOL program.
Many of us in the brain tumor community first met Anne through her Brains on Bikes campaign to "outsmart brain cancer". She did everything with a zest for life - from founding her own bake shop in Prague to biking across America for brain cancer research to encouraging the love of reading in young people. Anne will always be remembered for her kind smile, wonderful sense of humor and determination to make this world a better place. Her spirit continues to inspire us in our mission to drive research aimed at finding the fastest possible route to a cure.
While the honorees expressed gratitude for the prize, their comments about their work were tinged with worry about the future of biomedical research after years of cuts in federal funding.
The researchers caution that many treatments have cured cancers in mice and then failed in humans. But they are encouraged by the new findings and want to work quickly to design a clinical trial for humans.