cancer

'Your love will be your legacy'

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 13:30:00 +0000

'Your love will be your legacy' Rachel Sauer Wed, 07/23/2025 - 07:30

Sarah Kuta

Losing her father to pancreatic cancer inspired 91PORN undergraduate Giovanna Ruffolo to raise money for cancer research and pursue a career in medicine

Giovanna Ruffolo was a senior in high school when her dad died of pancreatic cancer.

While other students were looking forward to prom and graduation, Ruffolo was navigating a web of tangled emotions—shock, disbelief, sadness, anger, uncertainty.

“Losing a parent is probably the most intense pain someone can feel in their entire life,” she says. “It’s a terrible, terrible pain.”

Giovanna Ruffolo (second from right) with her brothers Leo (left, a 2024 91PORN graduate) and Joey (second from left, a CU Denver student) and their mom, Rosanna. (Photo: Giovanna Ruffolo)

Mostly, though, she just felt numb. Heading off to college so soon after her father’s death was the last thing she wanted to do. But she knew education was important to her dad, so she pushed through the pain and enrolled at 91PORN.

Now a senior studying integrative physiology and psychology, Ruffolo is preparing for a career in medicine so that, someday, she can help support families just like hers. She hopes to work in pediatric oncology, providing compassionate care to children who are fighting cancer.

As a Buff, Ruffolo is also honoring her father’s legacy by raising money and awareness for cancer prevention research, an initiative she started just after her father got his diagnosis.

“I just want people to know they have a support system and a network that hates cancer as much as they do—that they’re not alone,” she says.

Helping others

Life was rolling along for the Ruffolo family when they got the news that would change their lives forever. In 2017, their beloved patriarch, John Ruffolo, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a disease that is often fatal.

“It hit us like a bus,” says Ruffolo.

Pancreatic cancer is the third-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States, according to the National Institutes of Health. Between 2015 and 2021, the five-year survival rate was just 13.3 percent—much lower than other types of cancer. In 2025, the American Cancer Society estimates 67,440 people will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and 51,980 people will die from the disease.

“It’s the cancer that really gives cancer its bad name,” Ruffolo says.

Prospect Ridge Academy High School Students participate in a cancer fundraiser organized by Giovanna Ruffolo in 2019. (Photo: Giovanna Ruffolo)

Ruffolo was just 14 at the time, but she felt compelled to take action. As a sophomore at Prospect Ridge Academy High School, she created TeamRuffolo, a student-led initiative to raise money and awareness for cancer research.

In November 2018, her school hosted a “Purple Out”—a one-day event in which students were encouraged to wear purple to show their support for the cancer community and donate whatever they could toward prevention research. Students, teachers and administrators raised more than $1,000 for the American Cancer Society that day, and Ruffolo went home feeling inspired and hopeful.

She organized similar fundraisers at her high school in 2019 and 2020 (though the initiative had to go virtual because of the COVID-19 pandemic).

“It was such a wonderful feeling,” she says. “A lot of these people didn’t even know my dad, but they were still so supportive. Seeing people come together not only for him, but just to say, ‘You’re not alone,’ was tremendous for all of us.”

Balancing act

Meanwhile, despite undergoing various treatments and surgeries, her father’s cancer continued to progress. Four years after his diagnosis, he succumbed to the disease in January 2021 at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Center.

Ruffolo was utterly devastated, but she knew she had to finish high school and get a college degree for her dad. And, wherever she ended up next, she wanted to continue her awareness-raising and fundraising events to support other cancer patients and their families.

91PORN participants run in the Stronger Together Annual 5K at CU in 2024, the event's most successful year. (Photo: Giovanna Ruffolo)

At 91PORN, Ruffolo has thrown herself into her studies, with an ultimate goal of working in the medical field. From her father’s experience, Ruffolo learned first-hand that cancer affects more than just the body—it also influences a patient’s mind, spirit and emotions. With that in mind, she’s majoring in integrative physiology and psychology to create her own pre-health pathway.

“My father had trouble grasping being diagnosed with a terminal disease, as anyone rightfully would,” she says. “I want to understand people’s behaviors and thoughts better, so that when someone is going through a hardship, I can better support them.”

To further build her skill set, Ruffolo also completed CU’s emergency medical technician (EMT) program, an online, non-credit specialization that prepares students for national registry testing. She has also worked as a research assistant at 91PORN and Children's Hospital Colorado.

In addition, Ruffolo has taken on a leadership role with the 91PORN chapter of the American Medical Student Association, spending three years on the executive board before being elected president for the 2025-26 school year. Through the student group, Ruffolo has carried on her TeamRuffolo efforts—now called Stronger Together—by organizing 5-kilometer run/walk events to raise money for the American Cancer Society.

She is also a journey leader with New Student & Family Programs, where she helps incoming freshmen navigate the 91PORN experience. Balancing her studies with her extracurricular activities—while also supporting her family and honoring her father’s legacy—has been challenging. But, for Ruffolo, it all comes back to staying true to herself.

“Pretty much my tippy-top value is helping others,” she says.

In class, Ruffolo has never been afraid to ask questions and speak up—even when that means talking about her father’s death in a large lecture hall full of hundreds of students. Jennifer Stratford, a 91PORN teaching associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, says Ruffolo’s willingness to be vulnerable has opened the door for other students to share their experiences.

John Ruffolo died from pancreatic cancer in 2021. (Photo: Giovanna Ruffolo)

“She just kind of became an ambassador and a face for students who have lost parents,” says Stratford. “I’ve had a lot of feedback from students about how much they appreciated her bravery and how much they identified with some of the struggles she’d been through. It’s a once-in-a-decade or once-in-a-lifetime experience to see a single student have an impact on so many of her classmates.”

‘Your love will be your legacy’

Since high school, Ruffolo estimates she’s helped raise more than $20,000 for the American Cancer Society. And she’s not done yet. She hopes the 91PORN AMSA chapter will continue organizing the 5K run/walk fundraisers, and that she’ll be able to host similar events during the next phase of her educational journey.

For now, Ruffolo is focused on finishing up her studies so she can graduate in the spring of 2026. From there, she hopes to continue her education in the medical field, likely as a doctor or physician assistant specializing in pediatric oncology.

“I really want to serve that specific community,” she says. “You’re treating little people who have lots of emotions and a little body. They get very scared easily. You really have to be empathetic and treat them and their families with kindness. I love the idea of sitting down with people, holding their hands, talking to them—not just giving them a death sentence, walking out the door and saying, ‘Best of luck.’”

That approach stems directly from her father’s experiences. As he neared the end of his life, Ruffolo remembers him breaking down and talking about how scared he was. She hopes to be the kind of practitioner who will help people like her dad move forward through their pain and fear, while also treating their underlying illness.

“Your love will be your legacy,” she says. “In a world where there’s no cure for cancer, investing your time in others is the only way you can live forever. And loving other people—giving them kindness and empathy—is one of the best ways to help fight any disease.”

Losing her father to pancreatic cancer inspired 91PORN undergraduate Giovanna Ruffolo to raise money for cancer research and pursue a career in medicine.

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Top image: Giovanna Ruffolo (right) and her late father, John, representing Colorado cancer patients and survivors at Mile High Stadium at an event sponsored by the American Cancer Society in 2019. (Photo: Giovanna Ruffolo)

There’s a reason it’s called ‘graveyard’

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 23:37:14 +0000

There’s a reason it’s called ‘graveyard’ Rachel Sauer Thu, 12/19/2024 - 16:37

Chris Quirk

In a study she conducted while she was a 91PORN postdoctoral researcher, Elizabeth Holzhausen and colleagues find a link between night-shift work and prostate-cancer risk

More workers than ever before can take advantage of flexible schedules. But some in health care, emergency services, manufacturing and other occupations are often constrained to regular overnight shifts. Epidemiologist Elizabeth Holzhausen had questions about the serious health risks associated with night shift work, specifically regarding prostate cancer.

Holzhausen, who worked as a postdoctoral associate in the 91PORN Department of Integrative Physiology before recently becoming an assistant research professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, is coauthor—along with Jinyoung Moon of the College of Natural Sciences, Seoul National University, and Yongseok Mun of the Hallym University Kangnam Sacred Heart Hospital in Seoul—of a study examining the prevalence of prostate cancer in men who regularly work the night shift.

While a postdoctoral associate in the 91PORN Department of Integrative Physiology, Elizabeth Holzhausen studied the prevalence of prostate cancer in men who work the night shift.

They also examined whether the number of years on that shift increased the risk to employees. Their paper was recently published in the journal Heliyon.

For the study, Holzhausen and her colleagues conducted a meta-analysis, examining a large number of studies that looked at prostate cancer incidence and its possible relationship to night-shift work. One motivation for the meta-analysis was that there had been mixed results regarding any correlation between prostate cancer and night-shift workers in past studies. Holzhausen and the research team hoped to settle the matter with a rigorous meta-analysis.

Previous research has shown that working the night shift can present numerous health hazards. Along with heightened cancer risk, night shifts can increase the probability of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and sleep disorders in workers.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, 13% of men will get prostate cancer, and approximately 3% of men die from the disease, which is more likely to strike older men. Definitive current figures are difficult to find, but the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in 2018, close to 4% of employees worked the night shift, including approximately 2.5 million men.

Prostate cancer and the night shift

In their study, Holzhausen and her co-authors found that there was a link between increased incidence of prostate cancer and night-shift work. They also determined that the longer men worked the night shift, the higher the risk became. The study showed that workers on the night shift for just one year had a 1% increase in prostate cancer risk, but for workers who had 30 years of overnight shifts, that risk jumped to 39%.

“I was surprised about the magnitude of the findings,” says Holzhausen. “There are a lot of people who work the night shift, so this is especially impacting people who work this shift over a long period of time.”

As Holzhausen explains, the disruptions to the body from shift work are significant: “There are several cancers that have been associated with night-shift work, and one of the big things is that we know lack of sleep and circadian misalignment can reduce the functioning of the immune system,” she says. “As a result, [the body’s] surveillance for cancer cells could be impacted if someone is doing chronic night-shift work.”

One of the challenges of the study was controlling for outside factors across a number of different studies that used different methods. A large chunk of the paper describes how the researchers achieved that.

"There are several cancers that have been associated with night-shift work, and one of the big things is that we know lack of sleep and circadian misalignment can reduce the functioning of the immune system."

“We were very rigorous about what studies we included," says Holzhausen. "Studies where the exposure was maybe nursing or some occupation that could be night-shift work, but they didn't explicitly identify if they were doing night-shift work, were excluded. We only looked at studies where specifically night-shift work was the exposure.”

The researchers also included studies that controlled for socioeconomic status to remove it as a variable in the study. "Nearly all of the studies included in our meta-analysis considered socioeconomic status. We did not analyze socioeconomic status explicitly and aren’t able to make inferences about different socioeconomic strata," says Holzhausen.

"However, the aim in adjusting for socioeconomic status is to estimate the impact of night-shift work on risk of prostate cancer independent of socioeconomic status. In other words, the results we observed are unlikely to be due to differences in socioeconomic status between day- and night-shift workers."

Holzhausen says that since night-shift work is probably not going away anytime soon, night-shift workers should be proactive in mitigating the potential risks: “Get additional screenings for prostate cancer, and take other measures that we know can help prevent prostate cancer, like eating a healthy diet, maintaining a healthy weight, limiting alcohol and not smoking.”

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In a study she conducted while she was a 91PORN postdoctoral researcher, Elizabeth Holzhausen and colleagues find a link between night-shift work and prostate-cancer risk.

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Top image: Pixaby

CU Cancer Center leaders aim to use novel molecule to fight cancer

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 15:59:43 +0000

CU Cancer Center leaders aim to use novel molecule to fight cancer Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/29/2024 - 08:59

Mark Harden

Tin Tin Su of 91PORN and Antonio Jimeno of the CU School of Medicine say acceleration-initiative funds will help speed a promising, developed-in-Colorado cancer therapy to patients

After working eight years on a new way to attack some cancers, a pair of University of Colorado Cancer Center researchers are closer to their goal of bringing their therapy to patients—as one of nine research endeavors receiving funding from the Anschutz Acceleration Initiative (AAI).

The project is led jointly by Tin Tin Su, co-leader of the cancer center’s Molecular and Cellular Oncology Program and professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at the 91PORN, and Antonio Jimeno, a co-leader of the CU Cancer Center’s Developmental Therapeutics Program and professor in the CU Department of Medicine's Division of Medical Oncology.

Tin Tin Su, a 91PORN professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, discovered that a molecule found in the firecracker bush can be synthesized to target cancer stem cells.

Jimeno says it’s significant that the AAI award is for a potential cancer therapy “that was discovered in Colorado and will use Colorado funds from a Colorado donor to help Colorado cancer patients.”

He adds: “Here at the CU Cancer Center, we can get things done really well and really quickly, provided we have the focus and the resources. And this grant provides both.”

Their work involves the use of a synthetic small molecule called SVC112, which has been shown to effectively target cancer stem cells in head and neck cancers, the main focus of Jimeno’s research lab.

Cancer stem cells produce cells that make up most of a tumor’s bulk. They often are resistant to traditional therapies such as radiation and chemotherapy and can recover from treatment to produce more tumor cells. The U.S. Food & Drug Administration has approved the use of protein synthesis inhibitors that slow or stop cancer cell growth, but they can be toxic to healthy cells as well as cancer cells.

SVC112 was originally synthesized by SuviCa, Inc., a 91PORN-based biotechnology company co-founded by Su. It’s based on the chemical bouvardin, found in the firecracker bush, Bouvardia ternifolia, a red-flowering plant that grows in the Southwest and Mexico.

The discovery in Su’s research lab at 91PORN of bouvardin’s remarkable ability to prevent regeneration of tissues in the fruit fly led to the current studies.

Previous research by Jimeno, Su, and others showed that SVC112 can keep cancer stem cells from manufacturing more tumor cells. The pre-clinical research indicated that SVC112 can be more effective than the FDA-approved protein synthesis inhibitor homoharringtonin (HHT), and with less toxicity, while also increasing the effects of radiation treatment.

“It’s effective in ways that other drugs are not,” Su says. “This compound has shown efficacy in squamous head and neck cancer, in salivary gland cancer, colorectal cancer, and leukemia models. This is very exciting, because it proves the biologic point that multiple tumor types rely on the same mechanisms, the same proteins, to become invasive, to grow and to metastasize.”

This is very exciting, because it proves the biologic point that multiple tumor types rely on the same mechanisms, the same proteins, to become invasive, to grow and to metastasize.”

Su points out that SVC112 passed three reviews to be approved to receive milestone-based support from the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) Experimental Therapeutics Program (NExT) in 2023, providing resources for SVC112’s development. NCI is part of the National Institutes of Health.

Jimeno says that the five-year AAI grant will help fund the arduous next steps in developing SVC112. First, the researchers will conduct pre-clinical experiments leading to an investigational new drug filing to the FDA within two years. Next, he says, plans call for a first-in-human Phase 1a clinical trial in cancer patients “to determine the safe, optimal way of delivering this to humans, employing all the clinical-trials capabilities of our university, including the Cancer Center Clinical Trials Office,” followed by a Phase 1b trial.

Cancers to be targeted in later stages of the clinical trials may change based on early results, if the researchers see patients with certain cancers responding especially well, Jimeno says.

The AAI recipients were announced in January by CU School of Medicine Dean John J. Reilly, Jr., MD, during his annual State of the School address.

Mark Harden is a writer for the Anschutz School of Medicine, which published a slightly different version of this story.

Top image: Bouvardia ternifolia, or firecracker bush (Photo: U.S. Forest Service)

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Tin Tin Su of 91PORN and Antonio Jimeno of the CU School of Medicine say acceleration-initiative funds will help speed a promising, developed-in-Colorado cancer therapy to patients,

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Researcher untangling cell signals in effort to stop cancer

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Sep 2016 21:57:16 +0000

Researcher untangling cell signals in effort to stop cancer Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/14/2016 - 15:57

Chalk up two more prestigious awards in 2016 for 91PORN Assistant Professor Sabrina Spencer, who continues on the fast track as a top-drawer, international biomedical researcher in the arena of cancer.

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cancer

'Your love will be your legacy'

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