As the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Cancer Center director, childhood cancer research has become more than a job for Dr. Patrick Reynolds, it’s become a passion.
Dr. Reynolds is known across the state, nation and even globally for making strides in cancer research covering various age groups.
Over the last three years he’s worked closely with the Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation [ALSF], which raises money for childhood cancer. Now, on top of his work, Dr. Reynolds also wants to help raise funds on his own for the exact same cause.
“It’s [ALSF] one of the most effective fundraising organizations in the country that supports nothing but childhood cancer research,” said Dr. Reynolds. “ALSF is critical to ourselves and to other organizations that do childhood cancer research. Helping them in any way would be important — so to be able to contribute to that is very rewarding.”
Part of Dr. Reynolds research involves taking cancer cells from patients’ actual tumors, and recreates them so that he and his lab partners can understand how the cells work and what drugs might be used against them. It’s a model that’s been adopted by researchers from all over.
In addition to his work crew, there are also some major outside key players along the way.
“Many of our models come from children who die, and the parents make sure they get us their samples. We can grow from blood, the tumors can grow from the blood, and they get us the samples when the child dies and we let them name the cells that go out into the laboratories. So, it’s very special to the parents, it’s very special for us,” said Dr. Reynolds.
It’s also something special to for his lab assistants to be apart of. They say they consider themselves fortunate to work under Dr. Reynolds.
“He has saved so many kids’ lives and that’s why he’s so well respected in the cancer community. I feel really honored and privileged, and I feel a lot of gratitude when I come in and do this work,” said Monish Makena, a PhD student who researches at the Cancer Center.
While Dr. Reynolds says he’s happy to contribute to something so very important to him, he hopes more people from the community step up to help out in the cause as well.
“We’d like to see this year some funding come from Lubbock. All of this funding has come outside of Lubbock. People outside of Lubbock, from all over the country donate to this lab and we really have very little support from our own region, so we’d like to see that change.”
If you’d like to either donate to childhood cancer research or educate yourself on the effort, you’re encouraged to visit the Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation site by clicking here.
