From University of Chicago Athletics
The University of Chicago swimming and diving teams will be participating in the 12th-annual Ted Mullin "Hour of Power" Relay on Tuesday, Nov. 14 beginning at 4:00 PM (CT).
Athletes at the collegiate, high school and club team levels around the world will take part in the Ted Mullin "Leave it in the Pool – Hour of Power" Relay for Sarcoma Research. The event is sponsored by the Carleton College swimming and diving teams. The 2016 "Hour of Power" featured 163 teams and approximately 7,750 athletes.
The annual swim relay aims to generate funds and awareness of sarcoma – a rare soft-tissue cancer that disproportionately affects adolescents and young adults. Participating swim teams engage in continuous relays — any stroke, all-out swimming — for an hour, with the objective of keeping all lanes in each pool on the same length.
The "Hour of Power" event honors those who are fighting or have succumbed to cancer, including former Carleton swimmer Edward H. "Ted" Mullin, who passed away from synovial sarcoma in September 2006.
The "Hour of Power" has raised $667,000 since 2006 for pediatric sarcoma research at the University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children's Hospital.
The Ted Mullin Fund has supported research into novel chemotherapy/biology agents for sarcomas, new ways to administer chemotherapy in this disease, techniques to visualize more accurately the tumor response in the patient, novel genomics strategies to identify high-risk sarcoma patients, molecular techniques to personalize therapy to maximize benefit while reducing treatment-related toxicity, and treatments for metastatic or resistant disease that use the patient's own immune system to attack residual tumors. Each summer, the UCM hosts Ted Mullin Fund Scholars in pediatric cancer laboratories, giving collegiate Ted Mullin "Hour of Power" participants an opportunity to advance their interest in science and cancer biology. With initial seed money from the Ted Mullin Fund, UCM is celebrating the fourth anniversary of the Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology Program. Future plans include, in collaboration with other national programs, the establishment of a consortium to facilitate more rapid development and availability of new molecular and biologic therapeutics.