Little Warrior in the News
By Margaret Naczek – Reporter , Milwaukee Business JournalDec 24, 2021, 2:00pm EST
In just 18 months a series of bake sales and gift drives, golf outings and galas, a retail line and just a motivated network of family and friends turned into over $1 million raised for childhood cancer research from the newly created Little Warrior Foundation.
Piero and Maggie Spada and relative Emily McFadden started the Little Warrior Foundation in 2020 after the Spadas' daughter Lucy was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma, a rare and aggressive type of childhood bone cancer.
The Spadas' purpose was personal at first, seeing their daughter go through one of the most brutal chemotherapy treatment regimens that exists on the market and a year of therapy, but then the mission quickly turned global.
The Little Warrior Foundation's mission is to find a complete and permanent cure for Ewing sarcoma. The foundation hopes to do this by giving money directly to researchers to push treatment and therapies forward.
"I think the passion very much led it forward," Maggie Spada said. "I think one of the things that’s changed over the last 18 months is starting to engage more with the community nationally. We aren’t just a backyard Milwaukee foundation but truly a national foundation."
The Little Warrior Foundation has a medical advisory board that assists in determining where to award grants. Members of the board include Dr. Pete Anderson of Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital, Dr. Steven DuBoisof Dana-Farber Boston Children's Hospital and Dr. Laura Hughes of Children's Wisconsin.
On Dec. 9, the foundation announced a $200,000 grant to Cleveland Clinic to support immunotherapy research and treatment development led by Dr. Timothy Chan. The foundation has given another $500,000 in grants to researchers working to find treatment and a cure for Ewing sarcoma.
Piero Spada said there is critical value in childhood cancer foundations like the Little Warrior Foundation because they focus specifically on one type of cancer. He said about only 4% of all national cancer research funding goes to pediatric cancer.
"When you talk about specific cancer like Ewing sarcoma, you’re talking about a very small sliver of an already small piece of pie," Spada said. "That’s why we in large part exist is because it’s not so much that the science isn’t there. It is there. It’s just that there is no funding available for these researchers to go out and get federal grant money to propel their science and therapies forward."
The Little Warrior Foundation and other cancer organizations like it exist to fill that void.
Heading into 2022, Maggie Spada hopes to reproduce the same results of raising over $1 million in funding. The Little Warrior Foundation is in talks with several organizations for potential national partnerships. Piero Spada added that he hopes with foundation funding, the Little Warrior Foundation can support some of the scientific approaches that are in the pre-clinical phase and move them to clinical trials.
"Are we actually meeting our mission of moving the needle forward for kids that are battling Ewing sarcoma? Are we making it better for them?" he asked. "I hope that we’re able to do that in 2022 and start to see if we’re on the right path with some of these therapies that we’ve funded thus far."