Annual Newsletter

 

 

April 2024

 

Dear Friends,

 

We greatly appreciate your support of the Garrett B. Smith Foundation (GBSF) and want to provide you with our annual update.  Heidi and I established the foundation in memory of our four-year-old son who passed away on January 30, 1995 after a brief struggle with cancer.  Over the years, the foundation has raised more than $5 million and spent more than $4 million on original programs to help seriously ill children. We plan to rely on our endowment to fund these programs going forward. 

 

GBSF’s single largest expenditure (now $92K annually) remains clown care at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital. Dr. Chester Drawers (Leo Desilets), a GBSF clown since the inception of our program in 1997, supervises 6 professionals - “Doctors” Ya’ Don’t Say, Quackenbush, Lily Pad, Baffo, Sprocket, and Valentina.  The crew “operates” three days per week for five hours each day, visiting all pediatric units of the hospital, including surgery, hematology-oncology, emergency, intensive care, neurology, short stay, and psychiatry. In late 2022, we extended our contract with Healthy Humor, a nonprofit which manages clown care units at 15 hospitals nationwide, for two years and would expect to renew again at the end of 2024.

 

Our GBSF fellows, Dr. Sandra Ryeom and Dr. Charles Roberts, continue to pioneer new cancer treatments.  We started funding these doctors when they were young investigators.  Both now run internationally recognized research laboratories. We’ve summarized their most recent accomplishments here. 

   

Thanks to a generous lead gift by Peter Wright through the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, our fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Sandra Ryeom at the Irving Medical Center at Columbia University is now endowed in perpetuity.  She is currently investigating two novel approaches, cellular and antibody, to fighting gastroesophageal cancers. After identifying gene mutations in human tumors, her lab can rapidly generate a similar tumor in mice within weeks, not years.  Immpact Bio Inc., founded in 2017, then develops personalized, T-cell (CAR-T) therapies targeting these tumors.  On the antibody front, Dr. Ryeom modifies commercially available antibodies to recognize proteins found only in gastroesophageal cancer cells.  She hopes to translate her work into a human clinical trial in 2025.

 

Dr. Charles Roberts at St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis has continued his ground-breaking research on deadly pediatric rhabdoid tumors and their underlying SWI/SNF gene complex.  Mutations in this complex, containing 10-15 genes, are present in 25% of all cancers, adult and pediatric. A mutation in one gene in particular, SMARCB1, is particularly lethal.  Dr. Roberts has discovered that this mutant needs another gene, DCAF5, to thrive.  Excitingly, his mouse models show that normal cells can survive quite well without DCAF5.  He is now partnering with labs at Dana-Farber and Stanford to design a drug targeting DCAF5 which could theoretically inhibit breast, colon, pancreatic and other cancers without the side effects of traditional chemotherapy.  Dr. Roberts’ discovery was recently published in the prestigious scientific journal, Nature. 

 

On another front, utilization of Tazverik, a drug developed by Epizyme based on research in Dr. Roberts’ lab, continues to blossom.  Since it has shown definitive benefits fighting pediatric brain tumors in early stage trials, the FDA has expanded testing to more patients.  New early stage trials in other solid tumors could begin this year as well. Tazverik, in conjunction with other drugs, is also available to adults with

certain types of recurring lymphomas.  Dr. Roberts and scientists at Memorial Sloan Kettering are working to identify additional therapies to complement Tazverik.

 

After almost twenty years of funding Dr. Roberts’ GBSF fellowship on a rolling two year basis, we are extremely pleased to announce that Peter Wright will provide the lead gift to permanently endow the grant, aptly re-named The Garrett B. Smith and The Wright Foundation Research Fellowship.   Dr. Roberts will join Dr. Ryeom and 250 other elite scientists fighting cancer with the support of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.  GBSF, as well as the Smith family, will also provide funding. 

 

Heidi and I are extremely proud of the accomplishments of the Garrett B. Smith Foundation.  Our efforts remain a labor of love for our son and his memory.  Although Garrett’s been gone for almost thirty years, his words still brighten our every day: “Sun’s up - time to play!”

 

Thank you,

 

 

Scott and Heidi Smith

​

​