<< Previous   of   Next >> SCBJ/JOHN WOLCOTT  (click to enlarge) Cover Story: Health Care Dr. Greg Foltz of the Pacific Northwest Brain Tumor Alliance tells the Everett Rotary Club about his collaboration with the Providence Regional Cancer Partnership and The Everett Neurological Center to pursue research and treatment for brain cancer.

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CONTACT SCBJ John Wolcott, Editor jwolcott@scbj.com Dave Clark, Assistant Editor dclark@scbj.com

Brain cancer cure gets new attention in Everett

By John Wolcott
SCBJ Editor

Everett has quietly become one of the world’s few research centers for brain cancer, exploring for clues to understanding and treating one of the most terrifying diseases for patients, and one of the most neglected cancers in the medical community.

“If you’re a Seattle-area patient diagnosed with brain cancer, you’re shocked to find there’s not one community-based center focusing on brain cancer, not one clinical trial, and not much interest, until now,” Dr. Greg Foltz told the Everett Rotary Club at its Naval Station Everett noon meeting July 15.

That’s because only about 20,000 brain tumors are expected to be diagnosed this year, he said. Of that number, some 13,000 will die, although all brain tumors are not cancerous. Those numbers are not large enough to attract the attention of the National Institutes for Health, pharmaceutical companies or the public, Foltz said, so little is known about treatment for them.

“But those people who do have brain cancers, including thousands of Pacific Northwest residents, are still our neighbors, our families, our friends and they need your community support. Fighting brain cancer is not a money maker, it’s a commitment, a commitment to bring hope to people and eventually a cure by our efforts,” he said.

The formal brain cancer research links to Everett began forming in 2007 when Foltz, a neurosurgeon who heads the new non-profit Center for Advanced Brain Tumor Treatment within the Swedish Neuroscience Institute at Seattle’s Swedish Hospital, began building the Pacific Northwest Brain Tumor Alliance.

He has linked the alliance’s research and patient work with the new Providence Regional Cancer Partnership in Everett, housed in a recently opened $62 million treatment center, and joined the staff of The Everett Neurological Center headed by Dr. Sanford Wright Jr.

Other members of the alliance include Swedish Medical Center, Swedish Neuroscience Institute, Arnold Cancer Institute, Providence Everett Medical Center, Institute for Systems Biology and the Paul Allen Institute for Brain Science.

Foltz’s own commitment to finding a cure for brain cancer, presently an incurable disease that usually kills a person in one to two years, began in his early 20s when he was an accomplished classical pianist planning to study at The Julliard School. While staying at the home of friends in the mid-west, his host family’s daughter died suddenly from brain cancer. A neurosurgeon told him there was no way to save her, that what was needed was for someone to make the cure for brain cancer their life’s work.

Six month’s later, Foltz left his musical career to become that person, turning his feelings of helplessness over the death of his friends’ daughter into a campaign to find a cure. All through the years of earning his medical degree and becoming a neurosurgeon, he recalls being inspired by reading about Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center accomplishments.

“Thirty years ago, there was a community physician working at both Providence Hospital in Seattle and Swedish who lost his brother to cancer,” Foltz told Rotarians. “He was Bill Hutchinson, his brother was Fred. It was the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Lab that Bill started in the basement of Providence Hospital that went on for the first time to cure a cancer, leukemia, at a time when all cancer meant death. Afterward, treatment can on line for breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer … the world changed because of the actions of one man … today, my patients need another miracle … it’s our job as a community to come together to support that effort.”

For more information, visit www.pnwbta.org or www.everettneurologicalcenter.org.