SHERMAN OAKS, Calif –Pediatric medical cannabis nonprofit Saving Sophie has announced an inaugural fundraiser for October 12, the Saving Sophie Experience: The Journey to Find a Cure, which will benefit research for pediatric cancers.
Held at the Tropicana Bar of Hollywood’s historic Roosevelt Hotel, the event will feature celebrity guests, a cocktail party, an immersive scavenger hunt, followed by awards, and other fundraising fun.
A Hollywood “Golden Age” hangout, the Roosevelt Hotel was the location of the first Academy Awards in 1929. Fine artist David Hockney designed the mural on the bottom of the hotel’s Tropicana Pool. Former celebrity residents Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift also famously “haunt” the Los Angeles historical landmark.
The event will be attended by the organization’s namesake, 5 and 1/2-year old Sophie Ryan and other young patients who have used cannabis medication to treat cancer, and benefit from the work done by Saving Sophie.
Ryan suffers from a benign but aggressive and inoperable tumor, for which she has received chemotherapy since before she was one year old. AJ, a teen patient with bone cancer, had been told that he had months to live; now has been in remission after more than three years. Morgan, who was diagnosed with a brain stem tumor at nearly three years old, is now seven and exceeded doctor’s expectation for survival by years. All have benefited from the use of cannabis oil.
Saving Sophie founder Tracy Ryan, Sophie’s mother, pointed out that childhood medical conditions with low life expectancy often do not receive attention or research funding from pharmaceutical sources, simply because the conditions are often rare, hard to treat, and have low expectation of successful outcomes. Parents whose children suffer from many intractable conditions, like Sophie’s, or severe epilepsy, and even autism, are often left to whatever resources they can access.
The nonprofit continues to push forward with research, despite obstacles presented by continuing federal cannabis prohibition here in the United States, and to seek out patients that can benefit from cannabis oil treatment or participate in research studies. A study involving tissue harvested from Sophie’s tumor, as well as tissue samples from other cancer patients, started earlier this year and will benefit from funds raised.
“After Sophie’s brain tumor surgery this year on April 23rd, I was blessed with an opportunity to work with a world-renowned cancer researcher who agreed to help me work towards finding better treatment options for her disease, since her type of tumor gets zero research. Little did we know the incredible findings that were to come,” Saving Sophie founder Tracy Ryan told mgretailer.
“My daughter has been a miraculous healer since we got her started on cannabis at nine-months old, and now we know why,” Ryan added. “We have since enrolled two other medical cannabis pediatric cancer patients who should have succumbed to their diseases years ago, and one adult who was at the beginning of her treatment after her cancer recurred. But we need more patients to take the next steps in our research, and we are hopeful the community will come together to help us do just that.”
Several levels of sponsorships currently are available for The Saving Sophie Experience: The Journey to Find a Cure. For more information, contact [email protected]. To purchase tickets, visit JourneyToFindTheCure.org.
