Your Impact

The money raised from Swing for a Cure goes to sarcoma research and clinical trials at the MUSC Hollings Cancer Center.

Sarcomas are cancerous tumors that develop in bones and soft tissues like fat, blood vessels, nerves, muscles, deep skin tissues and cartilage. Sarcomas are rare, with about 13,000 new cases diagnosed each year in the United States.

Hollings Cancer Center has one of the leading sarcoma treatment and research programs in the Southeast, with a team of experienced physicians and scientists who are working to develop better therapies and treatments. Funds raised at Swing for a Cure support:

• Clinical trials. Every treatment that has ever made a difference in cancer care was once a part of a clinical trial. As the only National Cancer Institute-designated center in South Carolina, Hollings Cancer Center has access to clinical trials that aren't available anywhere else in the state.
• Tissue banking. Building a tissue bank for sarcomas helps scientists better understand what causes these rare cancers, which treatment options are likely to be most effective and how to improve patient care.
• Clinical and basic science research. Scientists are studying sarcomas and the various causes of highly aggressive tumors. This research is leading to discoveries that will improve care and outcomes for our patients.

Sarcoma research at Thaxton lab

From left: Katie Hurst, Jessica Thaxton, Ph.D., Kiley Lawrency and Ashton Basar. Photo taken pre-COVID-19 by Emma Vought.

At the MUSC Hollings Cancer Center, breakthroughs in sarcoma care start in Thaxton lab. Discoveries made by sarcoma researcher Jessica Thaxton, Ph.D., and her team are advancing treatments and therapies for sarcoma and metastatic bone disease patients.

Thaxton’s lab was the first to discover that T cells, a part of the immune system that helps kill cancer cells and control tumor growth, have an extreme stress response when entering a tumor. That stress zaps the energy they need to fight tumor growth. Thaxton believes targeting that stress response will allow multiple types of immunotherapy to work better for sarcoma patients. Immunotherapy is a form of cancer treatment that uses patients’ own immune cells to fight their cancer.

Money raised through Swing for a Cure gives researchers like Thaxton the means to explore innovative ideas that could lead to the next big breakthrough for sarcoma patients. Discoveries made in the lab also lay the groundwork to secure major funding, like two grants Thaxton recently received from the National Cancer Institute. The grants, which total $3.4 million, will allow Thaxton to continue her groundbreaking work.

“Overall, I am most proud of the fact that we’re taking a different approach to cancer immunotherapy by targeting the T-cell stress response,” Thaxton said. “This work will inform drug development and holds immense promise to generate better therapies for cancer patients.”