Roslyn and Leslie Goldstein have found that the only way to get closer to a disease’s cure is to invest in early-stage research. The couple will this month give $50,000 to underwrite the Breast Cancer Research Foundation’s first international conference in Tel Aviv following a million-dollar donation the couple gave recently to create an “Unsung Hero” award to commemorate friends of breast-cancer survivors.
Mrs. Goldstein began working with the foundation after her bout with breast cancer five years ago. She says it was the research behind her care that contributed to her beating the disease.
She and her husband, a former director of pharmaceutical company Advanced Magnetics, Inc., have been involved with funding medical research since creating their family foundation in 1980. In addition to breast cancer, they have focused on supporting stem cell research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Although most foundations give 5% of their endowment a year to charity, as required by tax laws, the Goldsteins say they surpass that each year and aim to give as much of it away while they are alive.
“There are wonderful museums, schools and other things people give to but you unless you are healthy you can’t enjoy those things,” Mrs. Goldstein says. “You can’t feed your soul until you feed your body.”
For the couple, research isn’t seen as charity. They see it as a “benefit, a selfish attempt to make a difference in the lives of their children, grandchildren and other generations,” she says.
One factor that draws the Goldsteins to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation is its financial structure: Rather than drawing from an endowment, every year the organization grants out nearly everything it receives. Ninety-one cents of every dollar goes to fund researchers.
In its most recent round of grants, this year the foundation is giving away $33 million to more than 170 researchers world-wide who are working on projects ranging from prevention, inherited pre-disposition to cancer, and the development of more effective treatments.
The foundation also funds a number of inter-institutional clinical trials as part of a larger push to foster collaboration among leading medical centers around the world. The Tel Aviv conference will bring together leading researchers and clinicians to share their research on breast cancer.
“A conference like this elevates the thinking and treatment for every newly diagnosed woman [and] accelerates the research taking place around the world,” says foundation president, Myra Biblowit. “Collaboration between all the warriors on the front line is the only way to push the envelope toward a cure.”
WSJ