Danny Fund Young Investigator Award

After seeing the outpouring of support following Danny's death, Bruce Springsteen, the E Street Band and Danny's family decided Danny's vision could make an even greater impact. Together with Debra and Leon Black, founders of the Melanoma Research Alliance (MRA) they created the Danny Fund to bring melanoma to the forefront of public awareness and to fund research with top melanoma doctors from around the world.

The money raised from this campaign will support MRA Young Investigator Michael Berger at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Berger's research focuses on improving targeted therapy approaches in the treatment of melanoma patients.

About half of melanomas have a mutation in a gene called BRAF. Drugs that block this abnormal protein have shown dramatic results; however, most patients develop drug resistance and relapse. Using an innovative sequencing technology, Dr. Berger will profile tumor samples treated with a BRAF inhibitor in order to determine genomic alternations that co-occur with BRAF mutations and that correlate with drug response.

This work will lay the foundation for future combination therapies and promises to advance the treatment of patients with metastatic melanoma.