Dr. Mark Souweidane, Vice Chairman of the Weill Cornell Brain and Spine Center and Director of Pediatric Neurological Surgery, will be honored next Monday night, September 30, with the 2013 Cristian Rivera Foundation Vision of Hope Award. The award will be presented at the fifth annual Cristian Rivera Foundation Celebrity Gala.
Cristian was just 6 years old when he lost his battle with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, or DIPG, in 2009. Cristian’s parents started the Cristian Rivera Foundation as a way to help fund research into this uniformly fatal brain tumor. Since Cristian’s death, the Cristian Rivera Foundation has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support DIPG research.
Dr. Souweidane was Cristian’s surgeon, and he has devoted much of his career to research into DIPG. Now the Co-director of the Children’s Brain Tumor Project at Weill Cornell, Dr. Souweidane is currently conducting an innovative clinical trial testing the safety of convection-enhanced delivery (also called interstitial infusion) of therapeutic agents directly to the site of a tumor. This technique bypasses the blood-brain barrier and holds promise as an alternative approach to DIPG treatment. (Find out more about the clinical trial, including video on how convection-enhanced delivery bypasses the blood-brain barrier.)
The Cristian Rivera Foundation has selected Dr. Souweidane to be the primary beneficiary of its fund-raising. This year, as in past years, John “Gungie” Rivera, Cristian’s father, will present Dr. Souweidane with a check to support his research in addition to the Vision of Hope Award.
Tickets are now on sale for the Cristian Rivera Foundation Celebrity Gala, to be held on September 30, 2013, at the Copacabana Supper Club 268 W 47th Street in New York, starting at 6pm. For more information, and to purchase tickets, visit the events page on the Cristian Rivera Foundation website.
