A message from Dr. Rayne Rouce, pediatric oncologist and investigator, Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine:

The generous gift from Not Today Cancer has made it possible for our research teams to do what we were unable to do for Mason - to eradicate leukemia in a safer, less toxic way. Your gift has helped us improve the way we make CAR T cells targeting T-ALL; it’s helped us to make them stronger, to make them work faster and better, and to make them safer. All of you know that it takes an entire village to tell cancer NOT TODAY. It also takes an entire village to drive cancer research forward, especially for cancers that disproportionately affect children, like T-ALL. On behalf of myself and my entire team, we thank you for being here, for supporting the fight against childhood cancer, for supporting the promising research advances made possible by Mason’s sacrifice. He asked me if we would learn something from him. I reassured him that of course we would-she told me that she never could have imagined just how much they would. And every child and adult since Mason who has benefited from his sacrifice, and their villages, thank you, and of course, thank him.

Mason’s sacrifice goes beyond the study he participated in. What we have learned has taught the field of cell therapy research how to better target T-ALL, which once published, can impact patients and families all over the world, not just with leukemia, but with brain cancers, sarcomas, neuroblastoma, on and on.

We can’t say exactly when it will be but we know it will happen: we will tell T-ALL and difficult to treat childhood cancers, Not Today.