April 2026

 

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 $100,000 annually, remains clown care at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital. Dr. Chester Drawers (Leo Desilets), a GBSF clown since we started in 1997, supervises our program.  The crew “operates” three days per week for five hours each day, visiting all pediatric units of the hospital.  Our clowns work under the auspices of Healthy Humor, a nonprofit which manages clown care units at many hospitals nationwide.  Last year, we extended our agreement with HH through 2027.

 

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 in 2015 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.  Dr. Ryeom and her team are currently investigating both immunotherapy (T-cell) and antibody approaches to fight gastroesophageal cancers.  Unfortunately, Dr. Ryeom’s commercial immunotherapy partner ran out of money before their therapy could reach Phase 1 trial.  Since the data accumulated in her lab showed significant potential, albeit in mice not people, she is hopeful that another pharmaceutical company will step in.  On the antibody side, Dr. Ryeom is now working on a drug combining chemotherapy with a targeting agent that binds to tumors exhibiting the FGFR2 protein, common in gastric cancers.  A key challenge here is destroying the tumor without damaging normal stomach tissue. 

 

Thanks to a second generous lead gift by Peter Wright through the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, we permanently endowed our fellowship in Dr. Roberts’ lab at St. Jude Children’s Hospital, re-naming it The Garrett B. Smith and The Wright Foundation Research Fellowship, in 2024.  Dr. Roberts continues to study the SWI/SNF gene complex, a central component of rhabdoid tumors, a lethal childhood affliction.  The British Journal of Cancer recently listed the top seven genetic targets for drugs to fight this aggressive disease, six of which were first identified in Dr. Roberts’ lab.  The lab is now investigating therapies specifically targeting DCAF5, #1 on this list.

 

 

After training, studying and publishing under Dr. Roberts’ tutelage, Hayden Malone, an emerging star in the rhabdoid tumor world, has moved on to a senior position at Stanford University,

expanding her platform as well as the potential to leverage St. Jude research across the broader spectrum of cancer science. 

 

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. 

 

“Sun’s up - time to play!”

 

Thank you,

 

 

Scott and Heidi Smith​​