Contact: Elizabeth Allen, 210-450-2020

The $16,000 grant received by the Cancer Therapy & Research Center at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio will be used to create a LIVESTRONG Creative Arts Center with an artist in residence to work with cancer patients.
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SAN ANTONIO (Nov. 8, 2010) — The Cancer Therapy & Research Center at the UT Health Science Center on Nov. 8 was named the recipient of a LIVESTRONG® Community Impact Project award.

The CTRC will use the $16,000 grant to create a LIVESTRONG Creative Arts Center with an artist in residence who will work with cancer patients.

“We’ll use art in all sorts of ways to get patients to express themselves, to help them to relax,” said Mary Jackson, CTRC’s director of patient and family services. “They’ll use their own creative resources to meet the challenges of fighting and surviving cancer.”

Community support was the key to winning the grant, Jackson said, as the CTRC won against several other qualifying candidates in a multistate region.

“Employees were voting, people at the Health Science Center were voting, people in the community were voting — and their votes meant something,” Jackson said.

The project, created by LIVESTRONG, the organization founded by cancer survivor and champion cyclist Lance Armstrong to serve people affected by cancer and empower them to take action, will bring proven cancer support programs to 55 communities across the United States.

“LIVESTRONG is dedicated to providing the best direct services to people affected by cancer and encourages our supporters to be actively involved in leading the unified LIVESTRONG movement against cancer,” said Doug Ulman, president and CEO of LIVESTRONG. “The LIVESTRONGCommunity Impact Project is exercising an innovative approach that engages more people in our mission and allows them to play a critical role in the organization’s programming.”

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The Cancer Therapy & Research Center (CTRC) at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio is one of the elite academic cancer centers in the country to be named a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Cancer Center, and is one of only four in Texas. A leader in developing new drugs to treat cancer, the CTRC Institute for Drug Development (IDD) conducts one of the largest oncology Phase I clinical drug programs in the world, and participates in development of cancer drugs approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. For more information, visit www.ctrc.net.