This October, we continue our family tradition of fundraising for Pediatric AML research projects in loving memory of our beloved younger daughter, Janelle, who returned to Heaven in Oct 2020, shortly after her 11th birthday. Her bravery and resilience in battling leukemia, her infectious cheerfulness, and her compassion for both children and the elderly remain etched in our memories. We miss her dearly.

This year, we we have designated our donations to support Dr Karsan's study on acute leukemia. It is a new project studying how chemical modifications to DNA, which influence gene activity without changing the genetic code, contribute to leukemia’s behavior and resistance to current therapies. Part of the study will use three kinds of single cell sequencing techniques to understand changes in AML, to explore the complexity of this disease, and to see how it becomes resistant to therapy. The team are using the power of genomics to estimate how many AML patients will relapse and give those patients additional or alternative therapies. They will be sequencing patients at diagnosis, resistance or relapse each year. The ultimate goal is to develop more effective, less toxic treatments, addressing the urgent need for better outcomes in acute leukemia, especially among children. The fundraising goal for this project is $500,000 and is an ongoing research.

Our goal this year is to reach our donation total of $35,000, which means fundraising an additional $5,000. Our family firmly believes that fundraising in these areas could bring more hope to children suffering from the same rare disease as Janelle! We invite you to join us in achieving our target this year. Thank you very much for your generous support. Janelle must be exciting in Heaven to know about this right now!!

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2020 (our fundraising story starting point...)

Our daughter, Janelle, is a very cheerful, creative, caring and funny 10-year old girl who enjoys dancing, singing and acting very much. Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) on Mar 14, 2020. This cancer is quite rare in children and is very difficult to treat. Worse yet, her genetics changes have posed a very high-risk case of AML on her. Having gone through several rounds of high dose chemotherapy plus bone marrow transplant (BMT) still couldn't keep this cancer at bay for too long. On the 58th day after BMT (Sep 18, 2020), her leukemia relapsed and became incurable. We managed to spend another month of fun family time with her, celebrating her 11 years old birthday happily together. She got baptized on Sep 24, 2020 with her beloved family and close friends around to witness her joy when she proclaimed her faith.  On Oct 22, 2020 she left us and has gone back to our Heavenly Father's hands.

Our family has witnessed how devastating pediatric AML can be and how helpless AML children are in terms of treatment options they can receive due to the lack of medical studies/advancement in this area. We have seen a lot of clinical trials/studies are just taking off or yet to be taken off on pediatric AML. As such, in memory of Janelle, we would like to fund this area of cancer research hoping to create more hope to children just like Janelle in future.

~ The Mak's Family