Two-time cancer survivor, Elyse NeMoyer, explains how research helped save her life.

If you are diagnosed with a benign brain tumor, you’re not alone. About 700,000 Americans are living with a brain tumor, and 80% of primary brain tumors  — tumors that began in the brain and did not spread from somewhere else in the body — are benign. But if a tumor is not cancerous, do you have to do anything about it?

From the day Roswell Park was founded in 1898, we’ve focused exclusively on understanding, preventing and treating cancer. But along the way, our work has led to major benefits for patients with other medical conditions — and created valuable tools for researchers in other fields of healthcare.

Christine Pieri graduated from nursing school on a Saturday and started work at Roswell Park the following Monday. In those early days, “I didn’t know much about oncology,” she says, “but once I got here, that became my passion."

One reason this finding is so exciting is that we can now focus on the X chromosome to find the gene mutations that put women at higher risk of ovarian cancer and men at higher risk of testicular cancer.

Prospective employers expressed doubt that she was really a nurse or emphasized that even if she were hired, she would not receive the same pay as the white nurses and would have to eat alone, in the kitchen. Those roadblocks were no match for the determination of Eva Bateman.

One day in 1955, Dr. James Grace’s two-year-old son, Jimmy, spiked a fever of 105°. It was the first sign that the little boy had acute leukemia — a fast-moving disease that in those days had no hope of a cure. When his son died only a few months later, Dr. Grace converted his pain to passion.

As we celebrate the 120th anniversary of Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, we recognize that what we have accomplished would have been impossible without the financial support of our community.