WHAT WE DO

For Ian Foundation is a public charity dedicated to raise funding for scientific research towards management and possible cure of SDH deficient cancers including GIST (Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor), Paragangliomas, and other related cancers. For Ian Foundation more specifically targets research of SDHB deficient GIST.

• Concentrate on fund raising.
• Engage with clinician-researchers to fund projects through a collaborative and peer review process.
• Engage with top clinician-researchers in the field to assess the current state of knowledge and gather a consensus of what are the most promising avenues towards making progress in fighting diseases/cancers believed to be caused by SDH mutations.
• Help patients who contact us by referring them to more established patient advocacy groups and information portals regarding GIST and SDH deficient diseases and cancers.
• Help introduce patients to experts in the field. 
• Help patients and clinician-researchers by ensuring that tumor samples from patients undergo the most rigorous and comprehensive testing and evaluation that is available today.  It's our belief that one avenue to make further progress is to provide the researchers in the field with as many samples as we can. At the same time provide them with as much resources (funds) that we can so that they can have their labs working on the problem.  It's our hope that solving the mysteries of these diseases, like many other scientific problems, is a matter of time and statistics.  The more researchers, labs, tumor samples, mouse Xenografts, and hopefully cells lines, the greater the chance of success.
• Avoid wasting hard to come by funding through frequent communication with other fund raising and advocacy groups as well as various researchers.