Expert Panel:
Dr. William Wierda, President & CEO, CLL Global Research Foundation
Jeff Folloder, Moderator and CLL patient advocate
Our recent CLL Global Research Foundation virtual town hall featured CLL Global President, Dr. William Wierda, and Dr. Patrick Reville, Assistant Professor in the Department of Leukemia at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. CLL patient advocate Jeff Folloder moderated the event. Watch the full webinar.
Transcript
Jeff Folloder:
Can you give us an update on what CLL Global Research Foundation is doing in terms of research?
Dr. William Wierda:
Sure. So, the CLL Global Research Foundation was started by Dr. Keating many years ago, more than 10 years ago, and it was founded with funding and donations that had predominantly come from patients. And that funding has been used to support research – laboratory research, clinical trial research, and also to support meetings like this and annual meetings we have with our colleagues to discuss our research.
Most of the funding that we collect for the Foundation goes to research. There is very low overhead or administrative cost to that, where some other funding and granting agencies, you’ll see a lot of cost going to the infrastructure.
We have a great administrator, Sam Pace, who does all of the administration for the Foundation, and we have for many years now supported quite a bit of research. I don’t remember what the number is up to now, but I believe it’s upwards of $30 million over 10 years in terms of research funding for work.
And that’s been very beneficial because you know, over the last 10, 15 years, we have made remarkable advances to treatment and outcomes for our patients with CLL. That’s sort of the work of a village, not an individual person or group, and CLL Global Research Foundation has been part of that research village that has contributed to the progress that we’ve made.
Jeff Folloder:
And that village is not just local at MD Anderson. It’s all over the world, isn’t it?
Dr. William Wierda:
Right. So, the Foundation funds investigators all over the world, collaborators that we have both in the U.S. and in Europe.
