September 12, 2000
Partnership between The Hospital for Sick Children and the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation has led to major advancements in CF research
Forty years ago, a group of parents who had children with cystic fibrosis (CF) got together at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) to discuss forming a foundation dedicated to improving treatments for this incurable disease. Since the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CCFF) was established by this group of parents in 1960, the median age of survival of affected individuals has increased from age four to more than 30 years – thanks to advances in treatment made possible through research.
Since its founding, the CCFF has contributed approximately $30 million to cystic fibrosis research at The Hospital for Sick Children, and approximately $200,000 per year to enhance the hospital’s CF clinic. SickKids continues to lead the province and the country in the delivery and improvement of care for patients with cystic fibrosis, one of the most common genetic disorders in Canada.
"Funding from the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation over the years has enabled The Hospital for Sick Children to develop one of the world’s leading program’s for cystic fibrosis research," said Dr. Manuel Buchwald, SickKids’s chief of Research. "We wanted to thank the CCFF for its enormous contribution to the hospital on this occasion of their 40th anniversary."
To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Drs. Lap-Chee Tsui and Jack Riordan, the scientists who discovered the gene responsible for CF, will reunite to report on the advances in CF research at a special lecture in honour of the CCFF taking place at SickKids on September 12 at 3:30 p.m. Dr. Tsui is SickKids’s geneticist-in-chief and holder of the H.E. Sellers Chair in Cystic Fibrosis Research at The Hospital for Sick Children. Dr. Riordan, who worked as a scientist at SickKids for 20 years, is now a professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine in the United States.
The Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation has been instrumental in placing Canadian scientists at the forefront of the world cystic fibrosis research effort. Since 1960, the CCFF has allocated over $115 million to CF research and treatment across Canada.
"The support the Foundation has been able to give to The Hospital for Sick Children would have been impossible without our partners and great friends – Kinsmen and Kinette Clubs of Canada, the Zellers family, and the Canadian Association of Insurance and Financial Advisers," said Cathleen Morrison, executive director of the CCFF.
For more information, please contact:
June Pierotti
Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation
(416) 485-9149 ext. 228
jpierotti@ccff.ca
or
For more information, please contact:
Public Affairs
The Hospital for Sick Children
555 University Avenue
Suite 1742, Public Affairs, First floor Atrium
Toronto,
ON
M5G 1X8
Canada
Phone: 416-813-5058
Fax: 416-813-5328