The Shula Fund

Honoring Don Shula

The Shula Fund solely supports Florida’s top cancer hospital, Moffitt Cancer Center, raising funds for breast cancer care and research to improve cancer patient outcomes throughout Florida and beyond.

DONATE NOW

About 1 in 8 women in the United States will develop invasive breast cancer during their lifetime. Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in women and the fifth leading cause of death overall. At Moffitt, we treat more than 1,000 newly diagnosed breast cancer patients each year. The Shula Fund at Moffitt is helping to support groundbreaking new research that has already led to important new insights in the fight against breast cancer.

Research goals supported by our gifts

Under the direction of Brian Czerniecki, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Breast Oncology, gifts to The Shula Fund help support the development of cellular therapies to treat this difficult and complex disease. As investment continues in the Fund, these resources are focused on a wide variety of efforts that include:

• Preventing recurrence in HER2 positive patients with residual disease following neoadjuvant therapy, using a vaccine developed at Moffitt.
• Treating metastasis in breast cancer patients with brain metastasis and central nervous system metastasis, also using a vaccine developed at Moffitt.
• Studying immune response to make therapies work in patients who become resistant to current therapies.
• Creating preventive vaccines against lethal forms of breast cancer and other solid-tumor cancers.
• Predicting response with high accuracy in those patients likely to have a complete response to vaccines and chemotherapy.
• Educating tomorrow’s oncologists and scientists who will lead this fight into the future.

The Shula Fund History  

The Don Shula Foundation was established in Miami more than 20 years ago. Through the foundation, the Shulas supported breast cancer research at Moffitt for nearly a decade. On July 15, 2014, Don Shula – the winningest coach of all time – and his wife, Mary Anne, announced that they were donating the Shula Foundation funds of $1.5 million to Moffitt and establishing the Don Shula Breast Cancer Research Fund (The Shula Fund). This important fund supports cutting-edge research projects that serve as a resource to accelerate our mission to contribute to the prevention, treatment and cure of cancer.

‘We are very grateful for The Shula Fund, which has helped us to begin groundbreaking new work that has already led to important new insights. Your support allows us to take the critical first steps in providing our patients with hope and cures that will allow them to be survivors.’

     - Dr. Brian Czerniecki, chair of the Department of Breast Oncology, Moffitt Cancer Center

DONATE NOW