Patrick Swayze Hard at Work
In Memory of Patrick Swayze
In Memory Of Patrick Swayze
It’s with the deepest regret that we announce the passing of Patrick Swayze to pancreatic cancer. Patrick Swayze, the actor and classically trained dancer whose role in the enduringly popular “Dirty Dancing” made him a movie star, battled pancreatic cancer for almost a year. Early last year, Swayze learned he had pancreatic cancer, a diagnosis that came two weeks after production wrapped on the pilot of “The Beast,” an A&E series in which Swayze starred as an unorthodox FBI agent.
Although the cancer was advanced, he was found to have a more controlled form of the disease and persuaded the network to go ahead with the series. It was shot over five months in Chicago while Swayze was undergoing chemotherapy and taking an experimental drug that targets tumors.
Today we mourn the loss of a movie star to the disease that has taken so many of our loved ones. Many of us at the Hirshberg Foundation know only too well the deep sense of loss that comes quickly in the face of pancreatic cancer. It is our dream and our mission to be part of the cure and we will not rest until pancreatic cancer is eradicated from every man, women, and child. “I feel like I wasted time with stardom back in the ’80s,” Swayze said. “Now I want it all. I want to do as much as I can.”
Our hearts and prayers go out to Patrick’s family and friends.
In October at the LA Cancer Challenge, we will walk in memory of Patrick Swayze and all those we love and lost. Please consider joining us to fight this terrible disease. Please visit
Ronnie Never Gives Up!
By Ronnie Raper
In March of 1995 my father-in-law, Doyle Williams, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I remember my own father, Cotton Raper, saying “You and Denise (my wife) better spend all the time you can with him because old Doyle won’t be around long”. Doyle was only 51 years old. Throughout his illness I tried to comfort Doyle and my wife as best I could. Dad kept saying “poor old Doyle….just no hope”. A hospice bed was soon staged in the living room and that is where Doyle drew his last breath on March 20, 1995.
Ironically, just 12 years later Cotton began losing a severe amount of weight. At first he was some what pleased because he had always been over-weight, but he soon discovered that this weight loss was a tell tale sign of something much worse.
We didn’t give it a lot of thought at first because Cotton was a hospital veteran. He was constantly under the care of specialist due to a rare disease called Wagner’s that disabled him in 1976. It wasn’t strange to us to hear that he was sick or going to have a battery of tests performed on any given day.
Cotton had already survived two open heart surgeries in his lifetime and we felt convinced that he would fight through whatever this was.
I remember my cell-phone ringing as I got into my car a week later. It was my mom and she said “Son, I made your Daddy go to the Emergency Room. They ran some x-rays and found a mass on his pancreas. They’re not giving him any hope”. I just couldn’t believe it!! I heard those same words twelve years ago.
I noticed that Dad’s eyes were yellow by the time I arrived. Where had I seen that before? You want to believe that if you see a train bearing down on you that you can get off the tracks after the horn blows, but we couldn’t change it. Oh, how that fact ripped at my heart. I noticed there was something else different about Dad’s eyes other than the jaundice. He realized that his body, just like a past boyfriend or girlfriend, was breaking up with him. He didn’t want to die, but life was breaking up with him. On December 7, 2007 at 3:00 am, Dad drew his last breath on the hospice bed that had been staged in his living room.
Two months later, I decided that there had to be something done to help get people off the tracks of pancreatic cancer. My research led me to The Hirshberg Foundation. I was filled with hope to realize there was indeed a way to fight back and that Cotton’s fight didn’t end on that hospice bed.
Those people that knew my Dad called him Cotton, due to his blonde hair. Cotton raised a family of singers and musicians, so we decided to plan a music festival in his memory. Cotton Fest was held on September 29, 2007 on our 17 acre private property in Etowah, Tennessee. We had professional and semi-professional bands playing mainly Bluegrass, Contemporary Bluegrass, and Southern Gospel Music. The event generated $700.00 in donations for the Foundation. We plan to do much better this year by getting an earlier start. There were a lot of growing pains associated with getting our property festival-ready. We are looking forward to The 2nd Annual Cotton-Fest which will be held on September 27, 2008. Our family and friends are working aggressively to secure enough sponsors in order to donate a 100% of the proceeds to The Hirshberg Foundation.
I am eternally grateful that there exists a foundation of hope for all those like Doyle and Cotton. This was my way of healing…knowing that their life and their fight will continue.
Since 2007 the Cottonfest Bluegrass music festival, held in honor of both Cotton and Doyle, has raised thousands of dollars for pancreatic cancer research. Ronnie’s long time passion for music and his love of family has guided him to bring together his community and continue fighting on behalf of his loved ones. Ronnie and Denise will never give up the fight against pancreatic cancer!
Last Lecture Author, Randy Pausch Dies at 47
Last Lecture Author, Randy Pausch dies at 47
We are truly saddened by the news of Randy Pausch’s passing due to pancreatic cancer. He will be remembered as the computer science professor who rose to fame after giving a quirky last lecture about celebrating life in the face of his terminal cancer. The 47-year-old died at his home in Chesapeake, Va., according to Wall Street Journal columnist Jeffrey Zaslow, who helped launch Pausch to fame after writing about the speech — which also garnered widespread attention when it was posted on YouTube.
When Pausch was offered a deal to write a book expanding on his lecture, Zaslow co-authored the non-fiction title. “The Last Lecture” became a bestseller.
All of us at the Hirshberg Foundation mourn with Randy’s family. We personally understand the pain of losing our loved one to pancreatic cancer and are committed to stand with Randy’s family and the more than 37,000 other families this year that will be touched by pancreatic cancer.
Agi Hirshberg, Founder of the Hirshberg Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research at UCLA Medical Center had this to say about this Randy’s passing:
“I have never personally met Randy Pausch, though his courageous message over the past year has touched millions of cancer patients and humanity. At the Hirshberg Foundation each and every death diminishes all of us, as our mission is to beat the devastation of pancreatic cancer for mankind. With Randy’s death we mourn as a nation and our determination to find the cure becomes an angry challenge!”
Please join our challenge to beat pancreatic cancer. Visit www.pancreatic.org to learn more about this deadly disease and help us save the lives of so many who have much more to say and do. Perhaps today is the day you can do something to help. Join us now and let this moment be a life giving moment for all of us. As Randy said in his Last Lecture, “We have a finite amount of time. Whether short or long, it doesn’t matter. Life is to be lived.”
Scientific Discovery at UCLA for Pancreatic Cancer
Scientific Discovery Supported by the Hirshberg Foundation, at UCLA
Ductal adenocarcinoma of the pancreas, which comprises 90% of all human pancreatic cancers, is a devastating disease, with overall 5-year survival rate of only 3-5%. The incidence of this disease in the US has increased recently to ~33,000 new cases each year and is now the fourth leading cause of cancer death in both men and women. Surgery and current conventional chemotherapy offer very limited survival benefits and novel therapeutic strategies are urgently required to prevent and treat this aggressive disease.
In recent years, the incidence of obesity, metabolic syndrome, hypertension and Type II diabetes mellitus, all characterized by insulin resistance and compensatory hyperinsulinemia (i.e. an increase in the level of circulating insulin), has reached alarming rates in the developed world. In the US 65% of the adult population is overweight (BMI > 25), and 30% is considered to be obese (BMI>30). A great interest has been generated by epidemiological studies that linked hyperinsulinemia and Type II diabetes with increased risk for developing a variety of clinically aggressive cancers of several tissues, including pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, colon, breast and prostate cancers. The elucidation of the mechanism(s) involved is of importance because this knowledge could pave the way for new strategies for the prevention of pancreatic cancer as well as other aggressive solid cancers.
It is increasingly recognized that the communication, or crosstalk between insulin receptor and G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) signaling is critical for the regulation of multiple physiological functions. This important mechanism of receptor crosstalk could also underlie a variety of abnormal processes. For example, excessive crosstalk between insulin and angiotensin II (ANG II) receptors leads to cardiovascular and renal abnormalities in obesity, metabolic syndrome and type II diabetes. Accordingly, the administration of angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors to patients with these conditions produces important clinical benefits. The fact that administration of ACE inhibitors also protects against various cancers further confirms an important role of a crosstalk between insulin and GPCR signaling in the development and proliferation of cancers. Studies in the laboratory of Dr. Rozengurt, the incumbent of the Ronald S. Hirshberg Chair for Pancreatic Cancer Research at UCLA, have focused on GPCRs in the proliferation of normal and cancer cells for some time.
Recently Dr. Krisztina Kisfalvi, a Hirshberg fellow and Dr. Enrique Rozengurt, found a new and exciting insight concerning the link between pancreatic cancer and hyperinsulinaemia. They identified a crosstalk mechanism by which insulin enhances the biological effects of GPCR stimulation by angiotensin, bradykinin, bombesin and neurotensin in human pancreatic cancer cells. Working with Drs. Osvaldo Rey and Steven Young, the team of investigators used novel imaging techniques to visualize the earliest steps in the action of GPCRs in individual live pancreatic cancer cells in real time, especially the release of calcium (Ca2+) from stores inside the cell. The crosstalk between insulin and GPCRs not only enhances rapid responses in the cell but also leads to stimulation of the proliferation of pancreatic cancer cells. It is important to note that these experimental findings were reproduced in several cancer cell lines, increasing their relevance and generality. The results have been recently published in the Cancer section of the prestigious journal Endocrinology.
The results have important clinical implications. As they show in the paper, insulin enhances the Ca2+ release from internal stores stimulated by GPCR agonists. The magnitude, rate and duration of increases in [Ca2+]i are increasingly recognized as encoding critical information for biological processes, including gene expression and cell proliferation. Given the close relationship between the endocrine and exocrine pancreas and the local production of several GPCR stimulators (like angiotensin, neurotensin) in the pancreas, the crosstalk between insulin and GPCRs is of especial significance for the normal physiologic functions of the acinar and ductal pancreatic cells. Any imbalance in this fine regulation (like hyperinsulinaemia) leads to alteration in the normal cell functions and results in excessive proliferation. It will be of importance to determine whether the proliferation of recently identified pancreatic stem cells is increased in pancreas of obese and hyperinsulinemic animal models. It is also likely that the novel mechanism identified by Kisfalvi, Rozengurt and their collaborators is of importance for other cell types, as well. In view of the importance of gastrointestinal hormones in the function of intestinal epithelial cells and the association between hyperinsulinemia and colon cancer, it is of interest that insulin also enhanced Ca2+ signaling in response to GPCR agonists in intestinal epithelial cells.
Anti-diabetic drugs are commonly used for controlling diseases associated with hyperinsulinaemia (Type II diabetes mellitus, obesity, metabolic syndrome) and for preventing their complications (hypertension, heart failure, renal pathologies, etc). The recent work of Kisvalvi and Rozengurt, supported by the Hirshberg Foundation, raises the possibility that the use of anti-diabetic drugs could have an impact in preventing the development of pancreatic cancer in patients with Type II diabetes mellitus, obesity, metabolic syndrome, all diseases characterized by hyperinsulinemia.