Valley Children’s Hospital announced Thursday that it has received an anonymous $15 million donation for cancer treatment.
The donation comes shortly after significant public outcry over the high executive pay its executives earn compared to other children’s hospitals.
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The big picture: The donation will enhance the hospital’s ability to provide bone marrow transplant and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy.
- Valley Children’s said the donation will eliminate the need to refer patients who need such treatment to Southern California or the Bay Area.
- CAR T-cell therapy uses the body’s natural immune system to fight cancer and infections and involves genetically modifying a patient’s own disease-fighting T-cells with additional receptors that allow the T-cells to destroy cancerous cells.
- CAR T-cell therapy has been successfully used for over 50 years, and a study in 2021 showed that around 60 percent of children who underwent the therapy were cancer-free in five years.
- The donation will support the program’s operational funding for the first decade. The program will take three to four years to establish and achieve accreditation.
- News of the donation comes two months after revelations of the children’s hospital’s expansive financial holdings, which exceed $1 billion in assets, and extensive, top-of-market executive payroll.
What they’re saying: “This gift will bring transformational cancer therapies directly to the children whose families look to us to provide them with the best care in the country,” said CEO Todd Suntrapak. “Children who need these advanced therapies will no longer have to travel long distances and spend extended days away from home to get treatment and will be able to receive life-saving therapies in a familiar setting, with their families close by.”
- Dr Vinod Balasa, medical director of the hospital’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, said these therapies are some of the most powerful weapons available to fight cancer.
- “With this amazing donation, Valley Children’s joins the ranks of the top children’s hospitals in the nation that can offer these therapies, as well as be among the first to have access to future advances,” Balasa said. “This is a life-saving advancement for our patients.”
