Safeway to Help Fund Prostate Cancer Research

ELLIOT ZWIEBACH

PLEASANTON, Calif. — Safeway here has joined with the Prostate Cancer Foundation in Washington, D.C., to donate $3 million apiece to fund a program called Special Team Amplification of Research (S.T.A.R.) — a research initiative that will explore the role of targeted heat in therapy to treat prostate cancer. Safeway, through the Safeway Foundation, raised the money from customer donations at the checkstand, the company said, and the Prostate Cancer Foundation has agreed to match that $3 million dollar-for-dollar. The S.T.A.R. effort will involve an inter-disciplinary team of investigators from multiple cancer research centers who will focus on new approaches to treatment. According to Steve Burd, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Safeway, "Supporting this kind of innovative research has become a trademark of the Prostate Cancer Foundation and [is] the principle reason Safeway developed a relationship with the organization more than seven years ago.” In a separate effort Safeway said the S.T.A.R. program will convene a "think tank" of 70 experts in different areas of oncology to explore why current therapies cure some types of cancer but not others, in an effort to give direction to future research on prostate cancer and other types of common solid tumors that are most difficult to treat.

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