On November 4, 2020, Carol Ruchalski presented a check on behalf of the Mary Ruchalski Foundation to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professor Chris Vakoc and the members of his rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) team for $60,000.
Based in Rockville Centre, the foundation is named after Carol and Francis Ruchalski’s daughter Mary, who lost her battle with RMS when she was 12 years old.
While at CSHL, Carol Ruchalski received an update on the ongoing research from Vakoc and CSHL graduate student Martyna Sroka, who are working on understanding why RMS causes muscle cells to stop maturing and instead to grow uncontrollably. Sroka has identified three new genes that are critical for this disease’s biology, which represent novel targets for therapy that could help turn these cancer cells into muscle cells again