News & Stories
Cooper’s cancer program gets $2M boost – Courier-Post
February 23, 2016 by Kim Mulford
CAMDEN, NJ – If it weren’t for genetics testing, Ilene Grossman would be walking around today with advanced ovarian cancer. Instead, the 49-year-old Voorhees resident is a cancer survivor with no trace of the disease that could have killed her with little warning.
That’s why she calls the planned expansion of the cancer genetics program at MD Anderson at Cooper Cancer Center “priceless.”
“I’m certainly someone who has benefited from the advances in medicine,” said Grossman, whose cancer was discovered at the Camden institution after her younger sister tested positive for a hereditary form of breast cancer. “If I was living at a different time … both my sister and I might not have survived.”
The genetics program is the beneficiary of a $2 million grant from the William G. Rohrer Charitable Foundation recently given to the Cooper Foundation, the largest grant given to the center since it opened in 2013. It will be named the William G. Rohrer Cancer Genetics Program in honor of the late Haddon Township mayor and former Cooper trustee.
Linda Rohrer, president of the charitable foundation, said she believes the program is “well worth” the cash investment.
“I would say in the past year, I have probably lost 10 friends to cancer — all different kinds of cancer,” Rohrer told the Courier-Post. “I have other friends who have beat it, so to speak. It just gets so depressing and frustrating that, with all the technology we have that we can’t find a cure for this evil, evil disease.”