For more than a decade, the CURE program has supported a broad range of biomedical research at 39 institutions across Pennsylvania.
These funds have led to research advances in cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, infectious diseases, and other health areas and improvements in public health.
In his budget for fiscal year 2013, the Governor proposed defunding the CURE program created by Act 77 in 2001, diverting diverting almost $60 million in research funds from the tobacco settlement into the general budget for other purposes.
In the News:
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Fund the CURE: It deserves support from Pa. tobacco fund dollars
Monday, May 14, 2012, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
This is not the first time the allocation of tobacco settlement money has been altered to meet the state's short-term needs, but this time the pipeline for research dollars from the tobacco fund would be completely shut off. Continue... - Don't cut funding for medical research
Friday, May 11, 2012, Philadelphia Inquirer
Gov. Corbett, in his understandable zeal to cut spending, continues to make poor choices that in the long run will cost the state more than he expects to save. Continue... - Tobacco fund: Kitty is being tweaked too many times
Sunday, April 15, 2012, Patriot-News
Gov. Tom Corbett is going a step too far in raiding Pennsylvania's Tobacco Settlement Fund. It's a tempting pot of money, but it should not be the state's new ATM.
Read the PDF or Continue... - Medical researchers protest $60 million of slashed funds in Corbett budget proposal
WHYY/Newsworks, February 17, 2012
Dr. Jon Chernoff, scientific director at the Fox Chase Cancer Center, said the move would negatively impact research being conducted by local institutions on a variety of health conditions."My first reaction is you've got to be kidding me, and my second reaction is this is going to be devastating," Chernoff said. Continue...
Thanks to your support for the CURE program, experiments were not halted, research projects that have taken years to build were not dismantled, and scientists and laboratory technicians did not lose their jobs.
Left intact with sustained funding, the CURE program will advance promising medical discoveries, support the hiring and retention of skilled workers, leverage federal and private research funding, and catalyze the formation of biotechnology companies.
The 2014 PA Budget is Coming Up
More information about how you can help this year will be available in April 2013.
Contact Your State Representative
The Committee of Seventy is a Philadelphia-based non-profit that promotes voter participation. Find a guide to contacting your state representative, state senator, or the governor on their website here.
Use the state link here to find your legislature and ask them to keep Pennsylvania in the front ranks of cancer research. Find Your Representative
(These links open to other sites.)
About the Alliance
The Pennsylvania Cancer Alliance is working together to fight cancer in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania by pursuing world-class basic and clinical research to improve cancer prevention and advance the standard of cancer care available statewide.
Basic Insights into Cancer—
Improved Diagnosis and Treatment—
With The Goal of Prevention
Alliance members are among the most active academic institutions in the nation in terms of patenting and licensing their discoveries to the private sector for development into anti-cancer diagnostics and therapeutics. The biopharmaceutical firms that partner with Alliance members represent one of the most rapidly growing sectors of Pennsylvania’s emerging knowledge-based economy.
Learn more about the PA Cancer Alliance:
Pennsylvania boasts five National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers—all Alliance members—more than any other state except New York and California. Tobacco-settlement and other funds from the Commonwealth enable Alliance researchers to collaborate to obtain the critical research data required to win highly competitive federal grants.