Mario Lemieux Lymphoma Center
Located in UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, the Mario Lemieux Foundation made a $2.5 million gift in 2014 to establish the Mario Lemieux Lymphoma Center for Children and Young Adults, a center for rare and hard-to-treat lymphomas that benefits children and young adults from around the world.
"We are grateful to Mario and Nathalie Lemieux and to the Mario Lemieux Foundation for sharing our vision of a center that capitalizes on our unique expertise to offer hope to a group of patients with a devastating diagnosis."Greg BarrettFormer President, Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh Foundation
Lymphoma is the third most common type of childhood cancer, and in the United States, more than 1,500 children are diagnosed per year with some form of the disease, according to the American Cancer Society. While standardized treatment protocols are used for the majority of pediatric lymphoma cases, currently there is no effective treatment for up to 20 percent of patients.
In addition to the research of Dr. McAllister-Lucas, who has studied rare lymphomas with her husband, Peter Lucas, M.D., Ph.D., since 1999, Ed Prochownik, M.D., Ph.D., and J. Anthony Graves, M.D., Ph.D., both physician scientists within pediatric oncology at Children’s, direct research laboratories investigating the mechanisms that underlie the development of lymphoma. The Lemieux gift allows Children’s the opportunity to also recruit an expert clinical researcher who can coordinate clinical trials of cutting-edge treatments for lymphomas, improving research that can have a global impact on care. In addition, the gift will foster the growth of the hospital’s Survivorship Program to support our patients who survive childhood cancer, the majority of whom have had leukemia and lymphoma.