100 Miles For The Cure

Cancer survivor Scott Glickman launches the Century for the Cure Bike Ride to raise money for the Cancer Institute of New Jersey.

Scott Glickman is amazed to be alive. In 1997, the Warren resident went to the Cancer Institute of New Jersey and found out he had stage four non-Hodgkins lymphoma. After obtaining second opinions at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute in New York and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Glickman, the chief financial officer of a woodwork manufacturer, decided he would rather be treated at CINJ.

Under the care of oncologist Dr. Roger Strair, an expert in hematologic malignancies, Glickman underwent chemotherapy and responded well. Since then, he has been in remission. He receives semi-annual checkups and annual CT scans or PET scans. “All the results have been good, despite a couple of scares,” he says.

To show his gratitude to the cancer institute, Glickman, 47, launched the Century for the Cure Bike Ride to raise money for CINJ. Patterned after a similar bike-a-thon in Massachusetts, the Century for the Cure (centuryforthecure.com) requires each participant in the 100-mile excursion through central New Jersey to collect at least $500 from friends and family. Glickman says the number of riders has doubled every year since the event began in 2005. Last year, nearly 100 people rode. Over the past five years, Century for the Cure has raised more than $410,000 for CINJ.

And that’s only the beginning. According to Strair, the seed money donated by Century for the Cure “allowed us to get large research grants to support the development of novel therapies, several of which are being used to help patients right now.” Three of these projects have since attracted research grants totaling more than $600,000. So Glickman’s bike ride has already added nearly $1 million to the institute’s budget for cancer research.

“If we save one life, it’s wonderful,” says Glickman. “But if we have the opportunity to help even more people by enabling researchers to go to the drug companies and other places to get financing, that’s also wonderful.”

Click here to read a related story: On The Cutting Edge.

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