Vol. 38, No. 18

4-22-2009
By: Jeff McCallister

Researcher/survivor jumps in to help Pelotonia cause

Donn Young has seen first-hand — and from many different angles — what cancer research at Ohio State can accomplish.

He earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate at Ohio State and went to work for the Cancer Center in 1975. He spent 37 years designing and running clinical trials to find more effective treatments of the deadly disease.

Then, days before the Ohio State-Michigan football game in 2006, he came to the Medical Center for back surgery and on a whim asked for a prostate-specific antigen test, which can detect prostate cancer. “They told me, ‘We don’t usually do a PSA to get ready for back surgery,’” Young said. “I said, ‘I’m old, do one anyway.’”

Normal PSA levels in healthy men are less than 4, most have a level less than 2. Young’s came back at 78.

“I’ve been involved in enough trials and seen and crunched enough data to know when it gets to that point, this is something that doesn’t go away,” Young said. “The average survival rate is something like 2-1/2 years.”

Young’s first move was to head right over to The James Cancer Hospital, where he signed up to take part in a clinical trial.

He’s taken hormone therapy as part of his treatment ever since as researchers there try to determine how often such treatment must be administered in order to remain effective.

So far, so good.

He’s reached that average survival benchmark and seems to be going strong. But he knows from his long years of experience that the best hope to find a cure is more research — and that takes money.

He’s now retired — in part to give him more time to fight the disease — but in his job, he’s seen promising research advance at a snail’s pace because of a lack of funding, or even stop completely while a researcher had to find an alternate source of money because a grant had expired before the research was complete.

It’s all that combined experience that inspired Young to sign up to ride in the inaugural Pelotonia Bike Tour for Cancer Research, a 180-mile ride from Columbus to Athens and back, which will be Aug. 28-30.

And he’s joined an all-star troupe that will tour the campus during the first couple of weeks of May to rustle up support — riders, sponsors and volunteers — for the cause.

President Gordon Gee, Senior Vice President for Health Sciences Steven Gabbe and Michael Caligiuri, CEO of The James, will headline the tour and appear at all five stops.

Young will make a couple of appearances to tell his story and others will join in as well. Assistant football coach and cancer survivor Joe Daniels, for example, will speak during the May 15 meeting in the Recruit Room at Ohio Stadium.

“I know what a difference having adequate funding can make, so when the opportunity to ride in Pelotonia came up, I said, ‘Sure,’” Young said. “But we need to spread the word and get as many people involved as we can. I’m willing to beat as many bushes as it takes.”

Because of a $12.5 million gift from Columbus-based NetJets that pays all overhead for the event, every penny raised by Pelotonia riders will directly benefit cancer research at The James. The first-year goal is to attract more than 2,000 riders and 1,000 volunteers and raise $4.5 million.

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