VCU news

By Pamela DiSalvo Lepley
Division of University Relations

RICHMOND, Va. (Aug. 22, 2006) – A $1 million pledge to endow a chair in neuro-oncology in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine will expand options for patients with cancers of the brain and spinal cord. The Richard S. Reynolds Foundation made the commitment in memory of businessman and philanthropist William G. Reynolds Jr., who served the Richmond community until his death in 2003 from a brain tumor.

After joining the Reynolds Company's law department in 1968, Reynolds rose to the post of vice president of government relations and public affairs. His community service included a three-year term on VCU's Board of Visitors and five years as a trustee of the Medical College of Virginia Foundation Board. 

The recent pledge was prompted in part by his experiences, as well as those of another family member, former Lt. Gov. J. Sargeant Reynolds, who died in 1971 at age 34 of a brain tumor while he was in office.

The Reynolds family has long supported neuroscience research in the medical school. Dating back to the early 1980s through gifts totaling more than $3 million, the family's foundation has funded the neurological surgery laboratories as well as the Richard Roland Reynolds Chair in Neurosurgery.

Once fully funded, the new William G. Reynolds, Jr., Chair will support the work of a medical oncologist who will lead a research program that translates new discoveries in basic science labs to the clinic, with the goal of developing new therapies for treating malignant brain tumors. The new recruit will be an addition to a neuro-oncology multispecialty team that draws physicians from a half-dozen departments. Key recruitments to this team have resulted in the expansion of its expertise and research, providing treatment strategies that carry patients from the initial visit through follow-up rehabilitation.

"The Reynolds Foundation's gift will allow us to recruit an acknowledged research leader with a track record of success in winning competitive external funding," said Jerome F. Strauss III, M.D., dean of the VCU School of Medicine. "The addition of this level of experience in translational studies would complement the existing strengths on the neuro-oncology team and equip it both to initiate local studies and to add Richmond as an important new site for multicenter cancer trials."

The incidence of cancers of the brain and central nervous system has remained relatively unchanged over the past decade, and the mortality rates for such cancers have seen little, if any, improvement. Recent statistics show that the overall, five-year survival rate for those diagnosed with a brain tumor is just 32 percent.

"We believe that there are many unexplored opportunities for medical research into cancers of the brain and spinal cord," said Richard S. Reynolds III, president of the Richard S. Reynolds Foundation. "This new project brings together the VCU Massey Cancer Center and the Harold F. Young Neurosurgical Center. We've followed these two teams closely over the years and were excited about the potential for a collaboration that we believe will shed new light onto the treatment and prevention of the disease, particularly because of the experience our family has had with this type of cancer."