Chris's Story

Chris was diagnosed with a type of cancer called a Ewing’s Sarcoma in 2009, when he was 21 years old. He began treatment with Dr. Arthur Staddon, a renowned sarcoma expert, at Pennsylvania Hospital that autumn. He finished the recommended treatment of intensive radiation and debilitating chemotherapy in April of 2010 only to find that the chemo had given him advanced heart disease. The heart disease was so bad that his team of cardiologists at the University of Pennsylvania thought he would need a transplant to survive, but through a combination of diet and vigorous exercise, he recovered enough that by the summer of 2014 he was able to play full court basketball and otherwise live an active life.

After completing his cancer treatment in 2010, Chris decided that he wanted to dedicate his life to helping other cancer victims. He was not only a leader of the James Madison University Relay for Life and worked for the City of Hope, but he also made a point of privately befriending and supporting other cancer victims.

In June of 2014, just as he thought he’d closed that chapter of his life, he began experiencing back pain that turned out to be an early sign that his Ewing’s tumor had again become active. He went through another long round of intensive chemo and radiation therapy. When that failed, he and his family searched for another cure. It was during this time that he met Dr. Breelyn Wilky and learned more about her immunotherapy research. Although she and Dr. Staddon and the other fine medical professionals who treated him helped him fight the cancer as well as he could, he passed away on July 27, 2015.

Chris is gone but not forgotten. We know he would be proud of the Foundation, and hope that it's work will make a difference for other cancer victims.

What we are funding

The Kicks4Chris Foundation supports foundational research by Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center into how cancer operates and how the immune system can be made more effective in fighting it. This research covers things like how cancers develop, grow and spread and why the immune system recognizes and attacks some cancers but doesn’t recognize others. This kind of basic research is critical but is often underfunded by large charitable institutions, pharmaceutical companies and the government, which prefer to focus on funding more specific and conventional treatments or other treatments that have already demonstrated promise in treating specific cancers.

We are support a program that provides practical nutritional advice for cancer patients, because in our experience nutrition can play a dramatic role in helping cancer patients resist the disease.

Cancer and the Immune System

Cancer occurs when one or more of the cells in your body “goes renegade” and begins to rapidly and uncontrollably multiply. Unless stopped, these cancerous cells form a tumor that grows so large that it eventually interferes with vital functions and kills its victim.

Cells become cancerous when something goes wrong with the genes that are supposed to program the cell to behave properly. This can be caused by heredity or environmental factors like smoking, or even completely by random chance.

Cancer seems unnatural but it really isn’t. Every plant and animal on earth has cells that multiply so they can grow and repair injuries, and all of them have genes that can start misbehaving in this way. Gene replication is a very complicated chemical reaction that can be modified by the influence of heat, radiation, acidity, nearby chemicals, viruses and many other things.

In fact, there would be many, many more cancers than we experience if not for one thing: our immune systems have developed ways to identify many kinds of pre-cancerous cells and kill them before they can cause any damage, just like they kill bacterial or viral infections. The problem is that the immune system doesn’t recognize and attack all cancers; the research we are funding will try to find ways to get the immune system to recognize and destroy these cancers too. You can read a better explanation of immunotherapy here.

Conventional Treatments and Their Limitations

Almost everyone knows someone who has had cancer, and almost every one of those patients has been treated through some combination of surgery, chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy.

Anyone who has gone through this kind of treatment will tell you that it is very unpleasant. Surgery is painful and debilitating and radiation and chemotherapy almost always cause extremely unpleasant side effects. Some of these side effects can be permanent. For example, Chris developed severe heart disease from the chemotherapy.

And none of these methods of treatment are totally reliable. If surgeons miss the smallest microscopic piece of tumor or some of the tumor has already broken off and moved elsewhere by itself, the cancer can regrow (which is why surgery is usually combined with chemotherapy and/or radiation). And some cancers have or can develop an extraordinary resistance to radiation or chemo.

The result all too often is that the patient will undergo these very unpleasant treatments and appear to be cancer-free only to have the cancer reemerge years later. So, we clearly need to develop better treatments for cancer, and immunotherapy is currently the most promising avenue for such treatments.

Past Projects/Support

During its first two years the Kicks4Chris Foundation supported research led by Dr. Breelyn Wilky at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. The Foundation donated $25,000 each year to support targeted research focused on immunotherapy. You can find out more about Dr. Wilky and the research she has been leading here .

Project Name

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Fifth Annual Kicks4Chris 5k

The Kicks4Chris Foundation is pleased to announce this year’s

Kicks4Chris “Immunity Booster” 5k
October 13 th , 2019, Rain or Shine
Alverthorpe Park, Jenkintown, PA

This event features all the best a 5K has to offer: a well-organized race (distance certification by the USA Track and Field Association pending), good food, generous sponsors, wonderful raffles and a day of great sportsmanship and camaraderie, all for an important cause! Medals will be awarded to the first-place female and male runners overall, and to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place runners in the following age brackets: 30 and under, 31-49, and 50 and up.

This year’s goal: $40,000 to help fund Penn Medicine’s sarcoma research initiative.

Targeted philanthropic dollars are needed for the foundational research necessary to better understand the interactions and gaps between our immune systems and the cancers they are designed to fight. And 100% of Kicks4Chris Foundation donations will fund research at Penn Medicine that will have a direct impact on finding a cure. Just this year, two of Penn’s sarcoma researchers secured significant government grants based on scientific research funded by the Kicks4Chris Foundation and other small organizations like ours!

We are convinced that immunotherapy offers the best and most effective and humane approach to treating sarcoma and other cancers, and we are committed to curing cancers by supporting Penn’s Sarcoma Program in developing an immunotherapy approach. This can only happen with the help of people like you.

Please join us as on October 13th. Every dollar raised will go directly to the Abramson Cancer Center for their sarcoma research program. Thank you for your consideration and support and we hope to see you there!

Click here to register, either to run the 5k, to walk 1.7 miles (2.74) kilometers, or to be a virtual walker.

Fifth Annual Kicks4Chris 5k