Avon Foundation

In 2008 more than 200,000 women in the United States will be diagnosed with breast cancer.  Even with advances in treatment as well as the best medical care, women with breast cancer still face painful and prolonged treatment with no guarantee of survival. Avon Foundation is committed to Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center's fight to end the suffering and death from breast cancer.

In 2001 Avon Foundation made a generous gift of $3.1 million to launch the Avon Breast Cancer Crusade Opportunity Fund. The Fund seeded innovative investigations of breast cancer detection, diagnosis and treatment, and helped to establish the Hutchinson Center's Breast Specimen Repository and Registry (BSRR). The BSRR is an essential resource in breast cancer research because it maintains banked blood and tissue specimens for clinical studies. The Avon Breast Cancer Opportunity Fund also provided critical support for research fellows, as well as outreach to ensure the best diagnostic care is available to all.

Most recently the Avon Foundation provided a $2.5 million collaborative grant to investigators from the Center, the University of Washington, and Johns Hopkins University to create the Avon Breast Cancer Immunotherapy Research Initiative. The goal of this initiative is to understand how the immune system can seek and destroy cancer cells, which will ultimately help develop breast cancer vaccines.

Avon Foundation knows that early detection of breast cancer is the best way to save lives. However, diagnosis is far from perfect — every year approximately 40,000 American women die from advanced-stage breast cancer because it was not detected early, when the survival rate approaches 85 percent. Avon Foundation provided a grant of nearly $1 million for researchers from the Center and collaborating partners to design novel diagnostic strategies to detect breast cancer in its earliest stages. Avon Foundation's dedication to support both early detection studies and later stage disease therapies is an essential and prescient approach to saving thousands of lives annually.

Since it was founded in 1955, Avon Foundation has been committed to the mission to improve the lives of women and their families. Now past the half century milestone, Avon Foundation is a 501(c)(3) public charity that brings this mission to life through two key areas of focus: breast cancer and domestic violence. From their initial $400 scholarship in 1955, Avon philanthropy has expanded globally and has exceeded $660 million raised and awarded worldwide. 

	Avon Breast Cancer Immunotherapy Research Initiative