Powering up to advance cancer nanotechnology

John and Mary Brock

Thanks to John Brock, his wife Mary, and their three children, two endowed faculty chairs at Emory Winship Cancer Institute and Georgia Tech will support research in cancer nanotechnology. The family, together with the Georgia Research Alliance and the Georgia Cancer Coalition, made the gifts totaling $6 million in honor of John’s mother, Anise McDaniel Brock, who died of cancer in 2007. Although she never smoked and followed a healthy lifestyle, she was diagnosed with lung and colon cancer in 2006. She was treated primarily in Mississippi until her family brought her to Emory.

Following her death, the Brock family looked for ways to help researchers develop new leads in the early detection and treatment of cancer. A Georgia Tech alumnus, Brock talked with cancer researchers and physicians at Emory and Georgia Tech about their nanomedicine research program. He also worked with the Georgia Cancer Coalition and the Georgia Research Alliance to enhance the value of his donation. The result is the Anise McDonald Brock Chair and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Cancer Nanotechnolgy at Emory, with a second chair at Georgia Tech.

Brock points to the care his mother received at Emory Winship and the strength of the joint research programs at Emory and Georgia Tech as the inspiration behind his family’s gift. “My mother was a caregiver in her community,” he says. “She would be thrilled that some value can be created in the search for better ways to manage cancer.”

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Emory Medicine - Spring 2009