“I got a new birthday.”
That’s how Champ Mitchell describes the day he received stem cells in his treatment for stage 4 Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma at UNC. Mitchell’s cancer went into remission after a treatment plan at North Carolina Cancer Hospital.
Mitchell and his wife ET are now donating $10 million to UNC to “create a new fund supporting ground-breaking research in blood cancer at UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, including lymphoma, leukemia and myeloma research,” the university announced on Monday.
UNC officials said one person in the United States is diagnosed with blood cancer nearly every three minutes. Blood cancers are projected to cause more than 58,000 deaths in 2018, according to the American Cancer Society.
In addition to receiving cancer treatment at UNC, Mitchell received his undergraduate and law degrees from Carolina. He recently served on the UNC System Board of Governors.
Mitchell said that this new fund will accelerate research at UNC Lineberger. He said this work will go toward research furthering immunotherapy, which uses the body’s natural defenses to fight cancer, as an alternative to chemotherapy, which causes severe side effects as it kills cancer cells.
“We really aren’t that far away from a whole new generation of treatments that will be much more humane and much more effective,” Mitchell said in an interview after the gift was announced on Monday. He added UNC was already equipped with some of the world’s best cancer researchers.
Mitchell said he is now feeling “great” after his treatment. He and his wife have been able to travel more since his cancer went into remission, he said. Although most of their time recently has went into repairing their home in New Bern after it was damaged due to severe flooding from Hurricane Florence.
The $10 million gift from the Mitchells will also go toward the university’s current $4.25 billion fundraising campaign.
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