Jan. 6, 2015—Ohio shop owners and founders of Brakes for Breasts Laura Frank and Leigh Anne Best have announced that the organization raised more than $100,000 in 2014 donations for cancer research.
Brakes for Breasts, which was featured in the December issue of Ratchet+Wrench, is now a nationwide campaign in which auto repair shops offer customers free brake pads and shoes on brake jobs (obtained through vendor sponsorship) and donate 10 percent of the labor and additional parts charges to the Cleveland Clinic Breast Cancer Vaccine Fund.
The money raised goes directly to help the research of Dr. Vincent Tuohy, who is in the process of working on a vaccine for breast cancer at the clinic.
“Dr. Tuohy is very hopeful that within a year the first vaccine will be to bedside,” Best said in an email. “The first vaccine is targeted at the triple negative breast cancer gene, triple negative being the most fatal breast cancer gene, and the one with no real solution.
“This will be a huge step, actually testing the vaccine, determining how much and how many doses will be required. … As you may guess, this is going to take a long time to establish viable results, to move to the next step. However, everything starts somewhere, and in the background, Dr. Tuohy and his staff continue to work in the lab, making the vaccine bigger and better, and applying the basics of the vaccine to other applications. The other applications would be the other breast cancer genes, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer and whatever else they discover along the way.”
One-hundred percent of the donations received for Brakes for Breasts go toward Tuohy’s research.
To learn more about Brakes for Breasts, or to donate, visit brakesforbreasts.wordpress.com.
