Stand Up To Cancer announced that more than $81 million has been pledged so far in connection with its star-studded September 7th roadblock fundraising telecast to accelerate ground-breaking research and bring new treatments to patients as quickly as possible, including pediatric cancer patients through the creation of a new pediatric cancer research Dream Team.

SU2C, an Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF) initiative, is still gratefully accepting donations at www.su2c.org and at 1-888-90-STAND (78263). The telecast is available at www.hulu.com/stand-up-to-cancer. The broadcast, dedicated to the nearly 13 million U.S. cancer survivors, featured Gwyneth Paltrow, Julia Roberts, Matt Damon, Michael Douglas, Jessica Biel, Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Renner, Seth Rogen, Emma Stone, and SU2C Co-Founder Katie Couric. Taylor Swift, Coldplay, Alicia Keys and Tim McGraw delivered one-of-a-kind performances as they joined with cancer survivors and other celebrities to engage viewers with powerful stories and a moving call-to-action.

ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC donated one hour of simultaneous, commercial-free primetime for the nationally televised fundraising special, which was broadcast live from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Cable channels Armed Forces Network, BIO, E!, ENCORE, HBO, HBO Latino, ION Television, LMN (Lifetime Movie Network), Logo, MLB Network, mun2, Palladia, SHOWTIME, Smithsonian Channel, STARZ, STYLE, TBS and VH1 also generously donated their air time.

Building on two historic fundraising telecasts in 2008 and 2010, these star-studded appeals garner public support for groundbreaking translational research accelerating the delivery of new therapies to patients, getting them from the "bench to the bedside" as quickly as possible. SU2C brings together scientists from different disciplines across various institutions to collaborate. One hundred percent of all public donations will go directly to cancer research. The 2008 and 2010 SU2C telecasts have been viewed in more than 190 countries and raised more that $180 million dollars. SU2C has made grants to seven multi-disciplinary "Dream Teams" of researchers as well as to 26 young innovative scientists who are undertaking high-risk, potentially high-reward projects to end the reign of cancer as a leading cause of death in the world today. Sixty-eight institutions are currently involved.

Stand Up 2 Cancer's Mission Statement:

Here we stand, on the verge of unlocking the answers that will finally conquer the devastation that is cancer.

We now understand the very biology that drives cancer. With knowledge gained from the mapping of the human genome, we can now target the genes and pathways that are involved in turning normal cells into cancerous ones. We are on the brink of possessing a toolbox full of new, advanced technologies just waiting to be adapted to benefit patients. Right before us, so close we can almost touch them, are scientific breakthroughs in the prevention, detection, treatment and even reversal of this disease.

Cancer takes one person every minute. One life in a moment. They are our brothers, our sisters, our fathers and mothers, our husbands and wives, our best friends, our children, ourselves. Every day in America, 1500 people die and yet the means to save them are literally within our reach. To wait any longer for someone else to save our lives and the lives of those we love is unforgivable.

Inspired to act by our own personal experiences with cancer, we recognize that we can no longer rely on the current system alone to give us the breakthroughs we need. So, we are calling on the public to help take matters into our own hands, investing in a revolution that will change the way scientist and clinicians work to understand and treat these diseases. Stand Up To Cancer is more than a rallying cry. It is a galvanizing force created to urgently move cancer research forward.

This is where the end of cancer begins: when we unite in one unstoppable movement and Stand Up To Cancer.

Working with the top experts in cancer research, Stand Up To Cancer is forging a new way to develop breakthroughs that will end cancer. We're putting together the best and the brightest minds in cancer research those on the edge of accomplishment investing in their projects and taking the bureaucratic obstacles out of their way. We are building interdisciplinary Dream Teams of scientists, clinicians, technicians and other experts, who will focus on a specific cancer problem. We'll track their progress in real time, so that everyone who invests can see how their participation is creating real change.

YOU CAN INVEST IN SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND THE END OF CANCER! Donate Here

To some extent, the answer to that question would be Martin Luther King, Jr.'s answer: "Now, because it is long overdue."

But what is special about now is that there have been three developments in the field of cancer research that have caused the tumblers in nature's cosmic lock to align so that it is possible, for the first time, to open the safe.

First, new technologies, including genomics and molecular biology, have permitted us to understand, specifically, what makes a cell malignant. This has given us rational targets for the development of new therapeutics. Second, scientific advances have provided us with the ability to hit those targets with relative safety and effectiveness.

  Finally, the paradigm for understanding cancer and its treatment has begun to change, so that a critical mass of the cancer research establishment is available to pursue a course of clinical development that moves the new basic science understanding into clinical reality as rapidly as possible. Heretofore, this was not the case, and most cancer clinical researchers insisted, for example, on considering breast cancer to be one disease and on trying to develop "one size fits all" therapies.

One of the watershed events that demonstrated the potential of our new understanding and new targeted therapeutics was the development of Herceptin; the success of this approach for that target and drug played a major role in the paradigm shift, as did the development of other targeted therapies such as Gleevec and Rituxan. These new therapeutics will initially have an effect on the outcomes of cancer similar to the effects of breakthroughs in anti-HIV drugs on the lives of AIDS patients; they will convert the disease into a chronic, manageable medical problem. In the future, they will increase cure and prevention opportunities.

Why now? Because the tumblers are lined up, and sooner or later we will be able to pull the handle and open the safe. Funding for this translational research has largely come through the federal government, and even in good times was very conservative and tradition-bound. Now there is the added problem that federal funding is decreasing for the first time in over three decades. The Stand Up to Cancer model is focused on providing the funding to pull that handle faster and the oversight to make sure that the funded remain effectively on task. It would be conservative to estimate that the handle will be pulled ten years earlier with SU2C's involvement. In human terms, the lives of hundreds of thousands of sisters, brothers, daughters, sons, mothers and fathers who will need these transformed therapeutics in the next 10 years depend upon our success.

John Glaspy, M.D., M.P.H. is a professor of medicine at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center of the University of California Los Angeles School of Medicine. He is director of the JCCC Clinical Research Unit and the JCCC Womens Cancer Research Program. Dr. Glaspy is involved in basic research in tumor immunology and the effects of fatty acids on carcinogenesis. His clinical interests include new approaches to the treatment of breast cancer and malignant melanoma.