Proceeds to help local researchers

A local gala event that encourages guests to dress in jeans and T-shirts is ready for its 19th incarnation.

Feist-Weiller Cancer Center’s 2016 Life Savers: Sauveteurs de la Vie – a cirquethemed event – is set for Sept. 10 at Sam’s Town Casino and Hotel. Sauveteurs de la Vie translates to “life savers” in French.

This year’s ball will be a casual event with proper attire including comfy jeans and T-shirts. LSU Health Shreveport public relations manager Kelly Dauphin said dress for the event is always casual on Christmas in the Sky years, and attendance is higher as a result. This year’s event is already close to selling out.

“With the casual year, people are just more relaxed,” said Life Savers event chairperson Cherish Posey. “They don’t feel like they are so rushed to get all dressed up. They can just come and enjoy the night and support Feist-Weiller Cancer Center.”

A host activities and entertainment options are on the menu for the evening. Musical entertainment will be provided by popular ’80s cover band The Molly Ringwalds. Circus-style performers from Spinner Entertainment of Shreveport, including stilt walkers and LED flamethrowers, will mingle with the crowd.

Posey said attendees will be able to participate in a silent auction with items up for grabs that include a six- to eight-day cruise with Royal Caribbean, a week in a Tuscan villa, a week in Aspen and jewelry donated by Sid Potts and McCary’s Jewelers.

For $20, guests will be able to draw a number in the Fork ‘N Cork to win a restaurant gift certificate or a bottle of wine. The bottles of wine, donated by Glazer’s and Cuban Liquor, range from a bottle of Dom Perignon to a bottle of Boone’s Farm.

Lee Michaels will raffle off six $500 gift certificates. Tickets sell three for $100 or $50 each. The best part is that pulled names are placed back into the hat. Dauphin said one person won multiple times last year. Only 200 raffle tickets will be sold.

“Life Savers is the only gala event that benefits Feist-Weiller Cancer Center,” she said. “We usually raise a quarter of a million to $300,000. All of the proceeds go to our Idea Grant program.”

The Idea Grant program at Feist- Weiller helps its researchers and those at LSU Health Shreveport develop their theories in their individual areas of expertise. An Idea Grant can range between $40,000 to $80,000. Dauphin said a team of approximately 40 scientists researches everything from viruses that cause cancer to experimental drugs that can be used in cancer treatments.

“When [our researchers] apply for national grants, like from the National Institutes of Health or the Center for Disease Control, those are very, very competitive. Something like 8 percent get funded,” she said. “We have an application process where they can apply for an Idea Grant, and it lets them get off the ground with their research and have much more competitive grants when they go to the national level.”

This year’s Life Savers Ball Idea Grant honoree is Dr. Andrew Yurochko, LSU Health Shreveport Carol Feist Chair of Viral Oncology. Yurochko studies human cytomegalovirus and has also been awarded a $1.8 million NIH grant.

“[CMV] is the leading infectious cause of birth defects in the United States, one of the leading infectious causes of complications in bone marrow and organ transplants, and it’s also a risk factor in the development of various cardiovascular diseases,” he said.

Yurochko’s grant helps him work to understand how the virus manipulates the host cell to allow it to spread and survive. He said knowing how it grows within a single human or within the human population, and what it needs to take over a cell, could lead to advances in areas like new drug development, new designs for therapeutics and even ideas for vaccines.

Yurochko’s wife and LSU Health Shreveportassociate professor Rona Scott will be honored with him.

Scott studies the Epstein- Barr virus (which is associated with several cancers). She was also awarded a $1.8 million NIH grant for her work.

“Right now, smoking is the leading cause of cancer – mainly lung cancer – but some of our researchers have hypothesized that in the coming years up to 15 percent of our cancers are going to be caused by viruses. Things like human papilloma virus and Epstein-Barr,” Dauphin said. “And that will be the leading cause of cancer as the smoking rates drop.”

Dr. Jason Bodily, assistant professor of microbiology and immunology at LSU Health Shreveport, is a past Idea Grant recipient. Dauphin said he has since been awarded more than a million dollars in grants from the NIH and American Cancer Society and is an example of how the Idea Grant program helps researchers get their grant funding approved at the national level.

Bodily studies human papilloma viruses. His interest is in the viruses’ life cycle – how they get in, how they replicate, how they mutate and how they hide from the immune system. Bodily said most people will Bodily said HPV is being found more frequently with oral cancer in the United States and other developed countries. Tobacco and alcohol use are also risk factors for oral cancer. Bodily said that as tobacco use declines, the incidence of tobacco-associated oral cancer is also declining. Meanwhile, the incidences of HPV-associated cancers are on the rise.

The Idea Grant he received helped fund the discovery that cells that contain HPV can tell other cells to make more growth factors. Growth factors are cells that tell other cells to grow. The new discoveries helped Bodily get a grant from the NIH that funds his current work.

“It was made possible by the Idea Grant.

And the Idea Grant, in turn, was made possible by the donors,” he said. “It’s the generosity of people donating to the cancer center and supporting the cancer center that make it possible to do this work.”

Since 1998, 32 Idea Grants have been awarded for a total of $1,435,500. Of those recipients, 20 have successfully competed for state, national or privately funded grants, bringing $14.3 million back into the community.

“The cancer center is very important for basic research here at LSU,” Bodily said. “They have provided equipment, they have provided funds, they have provided opportunities to network among the scientists. And so money that the cancer center has put out has returned in the form of government grants many times over.”

Cocktail hour for Life get a genital HPV infection during their life that will go away on its own within a few years. A small percentage of those people will get certain types of HPV infection that remain for decades.

“That’s really the public health impact of HPV – cervical cancer. About 500,000 women a year get cervical cancer in the world. About half of those die. It’s the No. 4 cancer for women in the world,” he said.

Savers: Sauveteurs de la Vie will begin at 7 p.m. Sept. 10 at Sam’s Town Casino and Hotel, and dinner is served at 8 p.m. Tickets to the event are $400 per couple, or $200 each. A table for 10 is $2,000. Tickets include dinner and an open bar complete with a cotton candy martini signature drink. To purchase tickets, visit www.feistweiller. org/lifesavers.

– Melissa Airhart