Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
The Catherine Peachey Fund has been around for eight years, adopted and supported by Warsaw residents. But what, exactly, does the fund do?
According to Dr. Kathy Miller, medical oncologist at the Indiana University Cancer Center, contributors to the fund "make it possible for us to do what we do."
Miller spoke Sunday at a luncheon at Tippecanoe Country Club; the luncheon was a way for organizers of the Peachey Fund's "A Day at the Lake" fund-raiser to thank volunteers.
Miller said one of her first projects at IU Cancer Center was to work with physicists on developing a new way of imaging dense breast tissue that involves immersing the breast in water and using sound waves to "map" the tissue.
The early trials for this procedure were financed through grants from the Catherine Peachey Fund, Miller said.
"A lot of that early work wouldn't have been possible without the Catherine Peachey Fund," she said.
The Amelia Project, another CPF project bringing doctors, scientists and researchers from around the state together to share ideas, also has made a difference, she said.
"It is astoundingly difficult to get all the people together in one place," she said, "but magical things happen when you do."
Through the Amelia Project, she is collaborating with a researcher from Purdue University who is studying the substance on cell surfaces that keeps cells tightly bound to neighboring cells. The purpose of the study is to find a way to keep cancer cells from migrating throughout the body.
Miller also said she will present the first trial in December for cancer patients who have received chemotherapy alone and those who have had chemotherapy with angiogenesis - a means of cutting off the blood supply to a malignant tumor, thus starving the tumor.
The results of that trial, which began with CPF-funded experiments, will be analyzed this fall, she said.
Miller is probably most famous because she is the oncologist who treated Dr. Jerri Nielsen, the doctor who was airlifted from the South Pole after being diagnosed with breast cancer.
Before Nielsen was brought out, however, Miller and others at IU Cancer Center treated Nielsen by radio, computer and satellite hookup.
"It was one of the most amazing experiences of my career and proof that breast cancer is a community disease," she said Sunday, calling Nielsen's treatment a "medical miracle."
Miller will tell the story of that treatment at 10:45 a.m. Sept. 14 during "A Day at the Lake." Her talk is free and open to the public.
