Spotlight Bonnie Rothman
Top right Bonnie Rothman’s mother (left), Nancy W. Fry Bottom right Bonnie Rothman’s grandmother, Mary C. Landis
Gift propels research to advance understanding of pancreatic cancer Pancreatic cancer touched Bonnie Rothman’s life twice. First, her maternal grandmother was stricken with the disease and passed away soon after. More than 30 years later, Rothman’s mother was diagnosed and passed away three-and-a-half months later. “I don’t think any disease should have the impact of a train wreck, especially in this day and age with the amount of knowledge we have in cancer,” Rothman said. After losing her mother and grandmother, Rothman felt frustrated by the limited treatment options available and committed herself to doing what she could to help advance understanding of the disease. Seeking to improve diagnosis and prevention of pancreatic cancer, Rothman made a $100,000 gift supporting the Pancreatic Cancer Early Detection Program within the Gastrointestinal Cancer Risk and Prevention Clinic at UChicago Medicine. The gift will enable clinic director Sonia Kupfer, MD, associate professor of medicine, and her team to expand the clinic’s efforts to advance research studies aimed at finding innovative and less invasive ways to detect pancreatic cancers earlier. “Bonnie’s gift will help us build the inf ra structure to identify new biomarkers and develop new genetic tests to catch these cancers earlier,” Kupfer said . “ Without philanthropic support from donors like Bonnie, we wouldn’t have the resources to get this important work off the ground.”
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University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center