Safeway awards $100,000 gift to UW Medicine for prostate and ovarian cancer research

A $100,000 gift to UW Medicine from Safeway Inc. Seattle Division will fund research into ovarian and prostate cancer. Funds for the gift were raised from Safeway customer donations, lottery ticket sales proceeds and a matching grant from the First Data Western Union Foundation and Safeway Foundation.

Accepting the gifts on behalf of UW Medicine were Nora Disis, associate professor of medicine in the Division of Oncology and director of the UW General Clinical Research Center, and Paul Lange, professor and chair of urology. Lange heads the NIH-funded Special Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) in prostate cancer. The program has researchers at UW Medicine and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

The $100,000 gift will be split evenly between ovarian cancer and prostate cancer research.

The portion of the gift for ovarian cancer research was raised primarily from Safeway customers at store checkouts in Safeway's Seattle Division, which includes stores in Washington, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho. The $50,000 will help fund Disis' work on an ovarian cancer vaccine.

The other half of the gift consists of $25,000 from the Safeway Foundation and $25,000 from the First Data Western Union Foundation. That portion will fund prostate cancer research.