Florida Family To Be Honored

Meso Foundation to Recognize Three Volunteer-Families at the Annual Symposium

The Meso Foundation honors three families who, through individual gifts and fundraising, funded $300,000 of critically-needed mesothelioma research in 2009.

On June 11, 2010 as part of this year’s International Symposium on Malignant Mesothelioma, the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation (Meso Foundation) will honor three families for their tireless work in promoting advances in mesothelioma research. The Bendix family, the Ruble family and the Sterling family have endured tremendous personal losses at the hand of mesothelioma. Despite knowing that their loved ones could not personally benefit from the results of their work, they banded together with friends and communities, to ensure hope for future generations, by funding three critical research projects through the Meso Foundation’s Research Program.

In Florida, Erica and Michael Ruble, children of the late Lance S. Ruble, were inspired to dedicate a grant to their father while attending the Meso Foundation’s Symposium in June 2009. They successfully organized numerous events and launched several fundraising letter campaigns. Their impressive $100,000 in contributions funded the Lance S. Ruble Memorial Grant. This grant was awarded to Dr. Prasad Adusumilli of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, whose work aims to train the body’s own immune cells to selectively kill mesothelioma cells, without the side-effects currently associated with traditional mesothelioma treatments.

“Our family chose this research project because my dad had such a hard time with the traditional approaches to mesothelioma,” says Erica Ruble. “We hope that this approach will enhance a patient’s immune system and enable people to live longer without suffering serious side effects.”