To our wonderful donors and BRCA community —

After careful deliberation and consideration of how the BRCA Foundation can maximize dollars for research, we are pleased to announce that beginning this month, we will focus all our energies on the newly created BRCA Initiative of the V Foundation for Cancer Research. The V Foundation is a well-established cancer research organization and this merger will allow us to leverage their fundraising engine, brand, and superstar scientific advisory board. It is important to note that all the work we've been funding will not only continue, but expand through the V Foundation.

The V Foundation is well known nationwide for the cutting-edge cancer research it supports— and what is lesser known is the person after whom it is named, Jimmy Valvano, was likely BRCA+. I also serve on the board of the organization and these two factors reinforce the natural tie-in and connection between the BRCA Foundation's commitment to supporting BRCA research and the V Foundation's mission of eradicating cancers of all kinds. As a matter of fact, the partnership is already tried and true; in 2017, in conjunction with the V Foundation for Cancer Research and Mindy and John Gray (founders of the Basser Center for BRCA at the University of Pennsylvania), we raised $7.5M for BRCA research.

While this collaboration has already proven to be a strong one, the BRCA Foundation remains proud of the work that with the generosity of our donors we’ve supported since our launch, and some of our notable accomplishments to date include the following:

  • Awarding $2M each to Harvard, Stanford, and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) to support research aimed at treating, curing and preventing BRCA cancers;
  • A commitment to the next generation of BRCA experts and awarding an additional $1M across those three institutions to support young investigators;
  • Creation of the Family Testing Program, a collaboration with Color, a Bay Area health technology company, that allows first-degree relatives (parents, siblings and children) of known mutation carriers, to test for the greatly reduced price of only $50; and
  • Joining with the Canary Foundation to fund ovarian cancer in the amount of $1.5M to support research specific to BRCA+ women.

It is also important to note that Mindy and John Gray, along with Cindy and I, will be supporting a $2.1M study at UCSF focused on working toward a cure for BRCA cancers.

We thank each of you for being such an enthusiastic part of our community and supporting the BRCA Foundation. You have made a tremendous difference and we hope you will continue to support the BRCA Initiative of the V Foundation for Cancer Research to the same degree. As a matter of business, you will be able to assign any donation as specifically designated to the BRCA Initiative. For those of you who have enjoyed the original content on our website, most of it will be transferred to our page on the V Foundation's website, so please continue to visit and share links to it.

As we begin 2019, we look forward to new and greater successes this collaboration will bring and invite you to join us in this new chapter. We remain committed to raising money for groundbreaking BRCA research that will help families and save lives.

  • Evan Goldberg
  • Chairman, President and Director
  • BRCA Foundation